Dr. Alice Geoffray Honored in School Renaming
Amazing news! The Orleans Parish School Board voted this week to name a new Career and Technical Center after our very own Dr. Alice Geoffray!
It’s a most fitting honor for the woman who dedicated her 40+ year career to equality in vocational education in Louisiana.
Thank you to everyone who supported this renaming of the old McDonogh 35 high school campus in Tremé! Your heartfelt letters to school officials and the stories you told about Alice at public meetings made this honor even more meaningful.
Some thought it was a long shot, with so many distinguished names on the shortlist. Alice was in good company with finalists Mack J. Spears, a former McDonogh 35 principal and the first Black person elected to the Orleans School Board, and Lucien Alexis Sr., also a former principal and legendary Harvard University graduate.
Alice, as you may know, was best known as the New Orleans Adult Education Center director during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a powerhouse of social justice and change that prepared 431 mostly Black women to integrate the corporate workforce between 1965–1972.
Yet, Alice’s accomplishments extended far beyond the Center. Her tireless advocacy and innovative programs touched countless students’ lives. She served as Louisiana’s first State Coordinator of Career Education, co-authored four textbooks, and was named Louisiana’s Vocational Educational Teacher of the Year – all while raising seven children and earning her master’s and Ph.D.
Today, Alice’s legacy lives on with The 431 Exchange scholarship fund and with this newly named state-of-the-art building.
The New Orleans Career and Technical Center is temporarily housed on Prieur Street until renovations at old McDonogh 35 are complete in 2022. NOCC is an impressive public program that provides high school and adult students with technical training and work experience in healthcare, engineering, manufacturing, and hospitality.
Since its launch in 2018, NOCC trained more than 725 high schoolers and 100 adults. Enough to make Alice’s heart sing if she was with us today!
Once again, from the bottom of our hearts, we thank the supporters and the Orleans Parish School Board. This has been an emotional process following a summer of racial unrest as the board moves to strike slave owners’, segregationists’, and Confederate figures’ names from public buildings.
May the healing begin. And may the championship of vocational education and equal opportunities endure, in Alice’s name.