SCOTT RABALAIS ON TIGER STADIUM ENTERING ITS 101ST SEASON 1C
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S at u r d ay, S e p t e m b e r 6, 2025
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Small N.O. charter school goes private
Festival testing confirms local shrimp Morgan City event improves seafood sourcing over last year
BY JOSIE ABUGOV Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By DAVID GRUNFELD
Vera Triplett, founder and CEO of the Noble Minds Institute, helps students with math problems during class Friday at the school on South Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans.
Noble Minds reopens as tuition-charging ‘microschool’ BY MARIE FAZIO Staff writer
Vera Triplett knew the state had her New Orleans charter school in its sights. Last December, Louisiana’s state board of education was on the verge of closing Noble Minds Institute for Whole Child Learning due to repeated “F”s on its state report card. So Triplett, who opened the charter school in 2017 to serve mostly students with disabilities, decided to pivot to the private sector. Last month, Noble Minds reopened as a tuition-charging “microschool,” or a very small, mostly unregulated private school. Triplett said the move made sense for the already-small school, which has remained in its leased church space on Carrollton Avenue and kept many of the same teachers and students. But the school’s departure from the public system, where test-based accountability is a condition of running a charter school, also means its performance will now face less public scrutiny. It also leaves the school with fewer resources, rais-
ä See SHRIMP, page 4A
Students read ‘Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi,’ a math adventure, during class Friday at Noble Minds Institute. ing questions about how it will meet the needs of all its students. Because it no longer receives public funding, the school can no longer afford to offer students lunch and it relies on several volunteer teachers who work
for free. And since the school has started charging tuition of $350 per month, about two-thirds of its former 150 students have left for other public schools.
ä See SCHOOL, page 7A
Georgia immigration raid detains 475 Federal agents swarm Hyundai electric vehicle site BY RUSS BYNUM and KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press
ELLABELL, Ga. — Immigration authorities said Friday they detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, when hundreds of federal agents raided the sprawling manufacturing site in Georgia where Korean automaker Hyundai makes electric vehicles.
WEATHER HIGH 92 LOW 77 PAGE 8A
One Louisiana seafood festival has done a better job of living up to its name. In a complete turnaround from last year, all seven vendors sampled at the Morgan City Shrimp and Petroleum Festival served authentic Gulf shrimp at the Labor Day weekend event, testing showed. At the same festival last year, four out of five vendors sampled sold imported shrimp advertised as local. The investigation in Morgan City marked a yearlong effort by a food technology company to conduct genetic testing at seafood festivals and restaurants around the region. Traveling from North Carolina to Texas, SeaD Consulting discovered that scores of restaurants were falsely advertising their shrimp. “I am so pleased,” said Dave Williams, CEO of SeaD Consulting. “It’s very difficult to get people to change. Finally, (the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival) got their house in order, and I’m very proud to say we had something to do with it.” The company’s rapid genetic testing helps address a problem plaguing the floundering coastal indus-
Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations, said during a news conference Friday that the raid resulted from a monthslong investigation into allegations of illegal hiring at the site and was the “largest single site enforcement operation” in the agency’s two-decade history. The Thursday raid targeted one of Georgia’s largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, where Hyundai Motor Group a year ago began manufacturing electric vehicles at a $7.6 billion plant. The site employs about 1,200 people in an area about 25 miles west of
Savannah, where bedroom communities bleed into farms. Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials have touted it as the state’s largest economic development project. Agents focused their operation on an adjacent plant that is still under construction at which Hyundai has partnered with LG Energy Solution to produce batteries that power EVs. Court records filed this week indicated that prosecutors do not know who hired what it called “hundreds of illegal aliens.” The identity of the “actual company or contractor hiring the illegal aliens is currently unknown,”
Landry fined for not disclosing free flights Settlement of ethics charges totals $900
BY ALYSE PFEIL Staff writer
the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a Thursday court filing. The South Korean government expressed “concern and regret” over the operation targeting its citizens. Koreans are rarely caught up in immigration enforcement compared with other nationalities. Only 46 Koreans were deported during the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2024, out of more than 270,000 removals for all nationalities, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “The business activities of our
Gov. Jeff Landry will pay $900 to settle charges that he broke state ethics laws by failing to disclose free private flights he accepted while he was attorney general. The charges brought against Landry by the Louisiana Board of Ethics stem from flights Landry took in 2021 Landry to Hawaii for a conference held by the Attorney General Alliance. He traveled there free of charge on a plane owned by Greg Mosing, a political donor.
ä See RAID, page 4A
ä See LANDRY, page 7A
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13TH yEAR, NO. 25