Lycée Français could become the only school in the French Quarter, occupying the 'Little Red Schoolhouse' building

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Area residents are hopeful now that the Orleans Parish School Board has announced a deal that would see Lycée Français occupy the only school in the French Quarter and bring schoolchildren back to the neighborhood after relocating from the area of a primary school last year.

The Orleans Parish School Board learned at its meeting this week that district officials had recommended the move of an Uptown campus (on Patton Street) of the French Immersion School to the French Quarter’s iconic “Little Red Schoolhouse.”

Homer Plessy Elementary School had left the buildingremoving the only remaining school from the French Quarter last year after district officials said $15 million in maintenance was needed to bring the building up to operational level.

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The district planned a $3.5 million capital improvement project for the building, which would require Homer Plessy to move to the McKenna Building in the 7th Ward at the end of the 2022-2023 school year.

By December 2023, Plessy leaders said the move would be permanent.

“We have two kids going to school, and another one that we were hoping would go to French Quarter school,” said Chris Olsen, a French Quarter resident and business owner. “It’s definitely been a big change since they moved. There are a lot fewer people on this side of the neighborhood, which is kind of the more residential side.”

Advocates like Olsen were left in limbo because the French Quarter has been without a school since Plessy moved.

Now they hope schoolchildren will once again walk the streets of the French Quarter.

“Only the feeling of the neighborhood changes. We have tourists, but they often want to know that we have people who live and work here in the neighborhood. It was nice that the school was here so the kids could run around during the day,” Olsen said.

“For the people who appreciate the French Quarter, and the people who live here or live nearby and want to send their children here, there is nothing better than being immersed in it every day.”

A Lycée Français representative said details to move about 470 primary school students into the building were still being finalized and could not comment further.

At the district meeting earlier this week, officials said Lycée Français would cover the costs of construction and completing repairs.

They officially announced the new location in a release on Friday afternoon.

“It would be a great boon to the city symbolically,” said Scott Tilton, executive director of the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures and a board member of Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates.

“I think with our cultural institution working in French, I think with organizations like the Historic New Orleans Collection that has all these archives in the city, I think there’s a real sense that you’re working to bring French back to the French Quarter,” he said.

“Using the French Quarter as a kind of experience outside the classroom, but in your backyard. It’s almost unparalleled.”

The plan is for Lycée Français to continue before the 2025-2026 school year.

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