Once among the worst schools in the city, Frederick Douglass High School is A-rated. Here’s how.

Every morning, before students walk through the doors of Frederick A. Douglass High School, assistant principal JaMarcus Welch leads staff through a recital of the “Bobcat identity.”

“Bobcats are the hardest working and smartest working people,” the mission statement begins. “In our character and results,” it continues, “we are models for the rest of the city of what is possible.”

In the years before Hurricane Katrina washed away New Orleans’ school system, Douglass was among the worst high schools in the state, earning repeated failing marks from the state Department of Education.

Twenty years later, the charter school that replaced it — and eventually took on its name — now ranks among the highest performing high schools in New Orleans. It earned an A-rating this year from the state and is bursting with students, a feat for an open-enrollment school tasked with educating any student who walks through its doors.

The school’s trajectory began to change a decade ago when Towana Pierre-Floyd, a 9th Ward native and McDonogh 35 Senior High School graduate, took the helm of the charter school run by the KIPP New Orleans network. She ushered in a new era of data-driven learning, embedded a satellite college campus within the high school and built pathways for students to earn career credentials and see the world. It has more than 650 students and sees itself as an academic powerhouse.

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