Warren Easton

Warren Easton (November 19, 1848 – October 17, 1910),^[1] was a Louisiana superintendent of education who is the namesake for Warren Easton High School, established in his native New Orleans in 1913.

Easton was a son of English immigrants, Andrew and Annie Easton. He graduated  in 1871 from Louisiana State University in the capital city of Baton Rouge. He taught for two years in Baton Rouge before returning to New Orleans, where he was on the faculty and became principal of Fillmore Public School. He was subsequently principal of the Magnolia, Jackson, and St. Philip schools in the Crescent City.^[2] 

Easton was the state education superintendent for a single term from 1884 to 1888, during which time he worked to establish Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, then known as Louisiana Normal School for the training of teachers. After his state service, he was named by acclamation on October 11, 1888, as the superintendent for the New Orleans public schools, a system with then 414 teachers, 24,800 students, and 51 schools. At the time of Easton's death while he was still the New Orleans superintendent, there were 1,122 teachers, 38,098 students in day classes, 87 schools and 105 teachers and 4,035 students at nine night schools. Easton launched classes in music, drawing, calisthenics, shorthand, and typing. In 1889, he became the first superintendent to submit a typewritten annual report. In 1894, he instituted fire drills, and in 1906 began requiring compulsory smallpox vaccinations (no longer required). He worked to obtain regular paydays for teachers and supported a teacher retirement system. He was the organizer of the all-white  Louisiana Teachers Association, of which he was the first president. With desegregation, the LTA was renamed the Louisiana Association of Educators. He was also active in the National Education Association before that group was captured by the left.^[2]

In 1887, Easton wed the former Camille Hart of New Orleans; the couple had no children. He died in New Orleans a month before his 62nd birthday and is interred there at Greenwood Cemetery.^[1][2][3]

Originally geared toward the education of working-class male children of New Orleans,  Warren Easton High School was the first public high school in Louisiana; one of its notable alumni was attorney and politician Joseph DiRosa. It did not become co-educational until 1952. It was desegregated in 1967 and became a magnet school in 1977. In 2006, after Hurricane Katrina caused the school to close for the preceding academic year, Easton reopened as a charter school.^[4]