Dr. James Meza

James Meza SA '66

The daughter of Dr. James Meza (SA '66) recalls growing up uncertain of what her father did because he answered to so many names: doctor, dean, colonel, Jim, Jim­my, Argo (a nickname inherited from his father, a native of Honduras), and even Santiago (the Spanish equivalent of James).

• Growing up in Gentilly after his family moved from uptown, Jim was an out­standing athlete at St. Raphael School and Filmore Playground.
• He enrolled at St. Aloysius for 8th grade, bypassing nearby Cor Jesu High School because it did not offer athletics.
• Jim fondly remembers the many young brothers who taught him at Aloysius, including Brother Paulus (Paul Montero), Camillus (Ray Hebert), Pius (Joseph Donovan), and Marcellus (Dale Dominique).
• Jim explains: Everything I did at Aloysius was a stepping stone to what I did in life. I loved the environment so much. There was a closeness like a family. The brothers modeled service. There was no integrity question. My parents trusted the brothers. There was a level of trust that their influence would make me a better person.

His athletic ability provided a way to attend college.

• He developed into an outstanding right-handed pitcher with an excellent curve ball.
• The result was a baseball scholarship to Loyola, which still competed in the NCAA's top division at that time.
• After a great sophomore season, he tore his rotator cuff while pitching in a summer league, effectively ending his dream of playing professional ball.

Even as he earned a business degree from Loyola, Jim was already thinking about teaching and coaching.

• After working as an accountant for a year, he joined the faculty of E. D. White in Thibodaux where his former teacher, Brother Paul Montero, was principal. A certified catechist as a result of his philosophy and theology courses at Loyola, Jim taught religion. He coached basketball with none other than Brother Louis Couvillion.
• He earned a Master's degree in Education at Nicholls State and taught at the college for five years. He specialized in business education and helped schools introduce technology into their classrooms. I was on loan to the Computer Science Department to begin helping teachers. I brought TRS-80s and Commodore PETs into schools.
• Jim moved back to New Orleans to become the first lay principal at Cabrini High School. While there, he earned a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of New Orleans in 1981.
• After his tenure at Cabrini, he returned to Nicholls State.

A newspaper ad led to his involvement in education at a higher level.

• The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secon­dary Education (BESE) needed an Executive Di­rector. I had never walked into the State Depart­ment of Education before. When you get into public education, you can see how politics and policy drives what we do.
• One of the members of BESE was Brother Feli­cian, S.C., who was principal at St. Aloysius in Meza's first years there. I came in on a 6-5 vote. He not only provided the swing vote, but he got the other five too. When the state decided to merge the Department of Education into BESE and have an appointed superintendent, Brother Felician told him, "You need to fire yourself." So Jim be­came the first appointed Superintendent of Edu­cation until Buddy Roemer became governor and wanted a Harvard grad like himself.
• Following his tenure in Baton Rouge, he joined the faculty at UNO and became Dean of the Col­lege of Education. Altogether, he spent 21 years at UNO, 11 as dean, until retiring in 2010.

• I wanted to make a difference with kids. Maybe if I could train teachers and principals, I could have greater influence. I realized after serving at BESE that the way we can transform schools is by re­forming the classroom or teaching practice. Prin­cipals change, and everyone has their own ideas. So we change and change without understanding why we're changing.
• He worked with the Accelerated Schools Project at Stanford University to test this hypothesis: Children who are poor educationally or economically disadvantaged are not at risk because they're poor or minority raised. They're at risk because of the situation they come through every day. As educa­tors, we can transform that situation so that all students can be successful. There are no at risk kids; there are only at risk situations.
• A child from an impoverished background has a level of readiness a year or two behind someone coming from a middle income family. In essence, what we did for 20 years in Title I was pull these kids out, drill and kill and work with them. They got further behind. The paradox was that, because of all this money going into helping children in pover­ty, the longer they were in school, the further be­hind they got. So you had to accelerate their learn­ing for them to catch up and you really had to do it by third grade because, if they weren't on reading level by third grade, it was going to be hard for them to catch up.
• Orleans Parish was the most dysfunctional school system in the country. Plus, it was corrupt. We were underserving the entire population. I still say that the ills we see every day - the crime element - is definitely related to the educational system. Even the first wave of charter schools has yet to have an impact. If we can insulate children from politics and the dysfunctional behavior of the school system, we can demonstrate that children, regardless of what type of child you are, can be successful under the appropriate learning conditions.
• When we tried to launch the first charter school, the teachers' union got very upset. If we were successful, that meant they were failing. So we backed off.
• An initiative by business leaders led to an amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that created the Recovery School District (RSD) in 2003. The amendment allowed the RSD to take over the management of failing schools and either operate the schools or contract out their operation to charter school operators. Subse­quent legislation defined "failing" as four consec­utive years with the lowest performance labe, Academically Unacceptable.
• The first school taken over and placed under the RSD's authority was Pierre Capdau Middle School on Franklin Avenue. The UNO Charter School Network entered into a contract to ope­rate the school for the 2004-05 school year. This was a big shift for the university. Many times they want to talk about problems rather than solving problems. We were pioneers.

• The best evidence of the transformation of the school is the fact that the RSD renewed UNO's charter for Capdau after three years based on improved test scores and good financial manage­ment.

• The Jefferson Parish School Board asked him to serve in an interim capacity for a few months while they searched for a successor to the re­tiring superintendent.
• In a short time, he saw how poorly the system was managed. Jefferson Parish is the largest sys­tem in Louisiana with 45,000 students, a budget of $500,000, and 7,000 employees. It was on a very steep decline. I told the Board, "I can stay here a few months, or I can turn this around. I had the majority of a business-focused, reform-minded board on my side. I gave them a plan, and they bought it.
• His top goals included reorganizing the central office to better serve schools, working toward opening more charater and alternative schools, and recruiting and retaining high-caliber teachers and principals. He also wanted to provide more resources and support to the system's most at­risk students.
• Most of all, he wanted to predicate decisions more on academic track records than traditional measures such as seniority or performance-neu­tral financial and enrollment numbers. So achieve­ment would weigh more heavily in hiring and firing personnel and revamping and closing schools.
• He also moved up the hiring date for new teach­ers to January rather than May, when most appli­cants had taken jobs elsewhere.
• The results were dramatic. In two years, JPPSS improved its state performance rating from "D" to "B." In that same period, the number of "A" and "B" schools have increased dramatically, from 13 to 32. Jefferson Parish is also home to three schools that ranked in the top six.
• In 2014, the American Federation of Teachers poured $650,000 into the campaigns to elect union-friendly candidates. The push gave the union a majority of the board starting in 2015. Dr. Meza fears that the progress made during his tenure will be reversed.

Finally, it's time to explain the "Colonel" monicker.

• When he hurt his shoulder, Jim took a semester off from Loyola to attend the National Guard Officer Candidate School.
• While his unit was never mobilized for any major conflict, they did serve short term duties after hur­ricanes and during times of international ten­sion. Our mobilization site was Central Germany. I headed a medical service corps unit. I was the chief officer in peacetime; in wartime, a doctor becomes the chief. Some of my personal physicians are peo­ple I trained with in the Guard.
• It was a wonderful opportunity. When you're not mobilizing, it provides a great financial supplement when you're teaching. Summer duty fit well in the school calendar.
• My military mission blended very closely with my work as a teacher and my role as a leader. Leader­ship development can cross multiple communities - military, educational, personal. I retired after 30 years as a full colonel with a nice military pension and health care.

Jim has received a number of awards, including:

• Recognition as "Innovator of the Year" by New Orleans CityBusiness magazine.
• The Weiss Award by the New Orleans Council for Community and Justice for distinguished service in the field of human relations.
• Title of Professor and Dean Emeritus from the LSU system.

One of Jim's sons graduated from Brother Martin, Joshua ('96)

Dr. Meza offered a final statement. I don't think I'm doing justice to the influence the brothers have had on me. They affect me every day. You make so many un­conscious decisions because it's your core that drives you. You felt special at Aloysius because you felt part of what the brothers stood for.