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Kennedy students can sue over mistakes that kept them from graduating on time, court says

The appeals court says the state and local school boards failed to prove that the students didn’t have standing to sue them for their role in the grading scandal too

NEW ORLEANS — A state appeals court has overturned an Orleans Parish judge and ruled that dozens of students from Kennedy High School’s Class of 2019 do indeed have standing to sue the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Orleans Parish School Board for administrative errors that kept them from graduating on time.

The lower court said the Kennedy families had no cause of action against BESE and OPSB because BESE invoked immunity against civil claims and OPSB contended it had nothing to do with a string of administrative errors and grade-fixing uncovered, which Kennedy leaders acknowledged after investigations in March 2019 by The Lens and WWL-TV.

The families’ case was allowed to move forward against Kennedy’s charter school operator at the time, New Beginnings Schools Foundation, but now the appeals court says the state and local school boards failed to prove that the students didn’t have standing to sue them for their role in the grading scandal too.

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