New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy has largely flown below radar since it was founded on the West Bank, during the post-Hurricane Katrina rebuild a dozen years ago. Its leaders now hope to raise the charter school's profile as it embarks on a $50 million expansion at Federal City.
The school was the brainchild of two Marine Corps officers, Col. Terry Ebbert, who is now president of the school's governing board, and Major Gen. David Mize. They initially wanted to fill a gap in the New Orleans public school system with an open enrollment school that could accommodate the children of Marine Corps personnel transferring to the city. The concept, Ebbert said, quickly grew to provide a military-style education to any New Orleans area student whose family understood and accepted the school's principles.
“We've been trying to fill that hole we saw and bring the structure and discipline students need to be successful in life,” Ebbert said. “We now have the advantage of reflecting what the Marine Corps is: a mixture of America — racially, ethnically and we're 38% young women.”
The school enrolls almost 900 students, which makes for the largest dedicated Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps unit in the United States, said Col. Chris Schlafer, the academy's commandant since 2015. Under the academy's structure, the commandant is the leader; there is also a school principal, currently Alexis…
