Advocate editorial gets its facts wrong

In an otherwise spot-on piece, The Advocate's editorial board leaped over the false equivalency cliff that is the bane of modern journalism. The substance of the editorial tracks a flaw in the logic of Gov. Jindal's conservative allies that goes something like this:

1. Conservatives generally favor literal, originalist readings of the constitution.

2. Gov. Jindal crafted a privatization scheme that diverts funds dedicated to the Minimum Foundation Program to a hodgepodge of nonpublic schools, private course providers, online schools and others.

3. A state court ruled that the Louisiana Constitution specifically reserves MFP funds for public schools.

4. Conservatives now express outrage that a district court judge read the constitution, applied it literally to Gov. Jindal's law, and found the law lacking. The complaint of Jindal's allies is that the judge did not bend the constitution to fit their goals.

The Advocate's editorial correctly points out that the MFP is "not just another pot of money. And the constitutional issues raised deserve more than dismissal, particularly from quarters where respect for strict construction generally rules."

But after spanking Jindal and company, The Advocate felt it necessary to admonish the teacher union that brought the case to court in the first place, saying that union leaders "are also guilty of ignoring the legal issues raised by the wording of the state constitution."

That's the false equivalency: if Jindal is wrong, the union must be found in the wrong as well. The editorial board has now criticized both sides, and can safely claim that it is impartial.

Except in this case, it is more than the equivalency that is false. The  Advocate has its facts wrong, too.
It was the Louisiana Federation of Teachers that brought the case to court in the first place. Our argument was that Jindal's scheme improperly and unconstitutionally diverted dedicated funds to nonpublic education. That is more than adequately demonstrated here, here, and here.

We are at a loss to understand what the editorial board meant when it inserted the sentence about union leaders "ignoring the legal issues raised by the wording of the state constitution." We were very aware of those issues when we filed the suit.

This union was of the opinion that Jindal's agenda included very bad policies. We had hoped that those policy issues would be the subjects of debate in the legislature, and that we would have opportunities to present better options.

But the methods chosen by the governor to steamroll his agenda through the legislature made it impossible to debate the policies on their merits. In adopting those methods, the governor chose to ignore the constitution.

We can hope that once constitutional issues are finally resolved, the legislature will revisit those policies in a full, robust and open debate.

When the apple falls far, far from the tree

Former U.S. Congressman and Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer recently dropped his long-shot presidential aspiration to tackle an even more daunting goal: reforming our corrupt campaign finance practices.

Gov. Roemer even appeared before Congress last month to testify about the malign effects of unfettered campaign contributions on our political system. At a hearing entitled “Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs,” Roemer complained that “Our institutional corruption places our elections in the hands of the mega contributors.”

Taking his argument just a bit further, the former governor said “The system is not broke … It’s bought.”

The theme of Roemer’s testimony, according to this article by Advocate Washington Bureau Chief Jordan Blum, was “the need to enact campaign finance reform and rein in runaway corporate spending in elections.”

It is a message apparently lost on his politically ambitious son, Chas, and other members of the state board of education who have thrown in with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s radical education agenda.

According to campaign finance reports, Chas Roemer was the beneficiary of $597,142.15 during last fall’s campaign for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The bulk of Chas’ contributions, more than $248,000, came from the Republican Party of Louisiana.

The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, through its network of PACS, put $87,500 into the Roemer campaign.

The ABC Pelican PAC, the political arm of the Associated Builders and Contractors, contributed $20,000 to Chas’ campaign.

Gov. Jindal himself donated $15,000 to Roemer’s campaign.

The Standard Companies of New Orleans, a beverage company subsidiary of DS Waters of America, put up $14,000.

Publishing magnate Rolf McCollister gave Roemer $6,000, on top of invaluable column inches in his newspaper.

From its offices in Virginia, the pro-voucher Louisiana Federation of Children’s PAC sent another $6,000.

Roemer’s closest competitor, former Ascension Parish Superintendent of Schools Superintendent Donald Songy, raised a total of $56,660 for the race (full disclosure: the Louisiana Federation of Teachers contributed less than $6,000 Songy’s campaign).

Given that disparity in resources – nearly $600,000 versus less than $57,000 – Roemer was able to mount a very effective, and very negative, multi-media campaign that overwhelmed Songy.

Roemer was not the only candidate blessed by Jindal and his big business friends. Candidates allied with the governor amassed contributions of more than $2.8 million. Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg got into the act, donating $55,000 to Jindal’s candidates. The closest competitors to the Jindal ticket raised a combined total of less than $348,000.

The money fueled a tsunami of advertising that had never been seen in BESE races, guaranteeing a victory for Gov. Jindal’s forces.

The immediate result of the election was the anointing of John White as superintendent, followed by a BESE kowtow to whatever privatization scheme the governor proposes. Which, as blogger Mike Deshotels writes here, means that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon be siphoned away from public schools into the pockets of “course choice providers” linked to big business.

Buddy Roemer is right. Big money donors and their unlimited contributions are the major corrupting factors in American politics. When will he tell Chas?

Three ways to stop the Jindal agenda

Gov. Jindal’s anti-public education, anti-teacher agenda: Tell your Senator and Representative to vote NO on these bills: HB 974 and SB603, and HB976 and SB 597

By now you know how educators were disrespected at the State Capitol on March 14 and 15. Thousands were turned away at the door while the House and Senate Education Committees marched almost lockstep to approve the Jindal agenda. The few lawmakers who stood with us were railroaded by the most extreme display of executive overreach since Huey Long.

It’s important for the rest of the Legislature to hear from the voters before these bills become law. They have the potential to destroy public education and our profession. Here are 3 things you can do right now to help derail Gov. Jindal’s train before public education and the teaching profession are damaged beyond repair.

1. Click here and send an e-mail message to your Senator and Representative, telling them about your opposition to the bills.

2. Call your Senator and Representative.

Your Senator’s contact information is here, and your Representatives information is here. If you don’t know who they are, click here to find out.

Using the information listed below, explain to them that you are a voter in their district and you oppose these bills.

3. Send this link to everyone in your address book – legislators need to hear from as many people as possible!

Here’s what is at stake with these bills:

HB 974/SB 603: Attacks on the teaching profession

If these bills pass, virtually all personnel decisions will be based on the controversial new ‘Value Added Model” of teacher evaluation.

• There will never be another across-the-board pay raise, and no more salary schedule for new teachers. Local superintendents will decide how much each teacher and school employee will earn, largely based on evaluations.


• Any teacher who receives an ”ineffective” rating even once will be ineligible for pay raises, will lose tenure rights and will be considered an “at will” employee who can be fired immediately.


• Teachers will have to be rated “highly effective” for five straight years to earn tenure. The architect of Gov. Jindal’s Value Added evaluation program says that is nearly impossible to do.


• In dismissal proceedings, teachers have no right to a list of specific charges, may not appeal to the school board, and have only 60 days to lodge an appeal, instead of the current one-year limitation. Language requiring teachers to be found guilty is removed.

HB 976/SB 597: The destruction of public education

These bills will use the funding process to virtually abolish public education. Your tax dollars will be spent on private and religious schools, virtual schools, home schools and charter schools created by corporations, businesses and industry providers.

• These bills violate the State Constitution, which says that Minimum Foundation Program funds can only be used for “public elementary and secondary schools.”


• Tax money approved by voters for local salaries, construction and maintenance will go to these schools, even if the schools are in a different city or parish.


• The only requirement to teach in these schools will be a Bachelor’s degree – no certification will be necessary.


• The only fiscal oversight for these new charter schools is an annual report to the unelected charter authorizer, not to BESE or the local school board.


• Online teachers from anywhere in the world will automatically be certified as Louisiana teachers. These online teachers will NOT be subject to Louisiana teacher evaluations or accountability.

Advocate calls 'baloney' on higher education budget

Today's editorial in The Advocate calls 'baloney' Gov. Bobby Jindal's claim that his proposed budget spares higher education from further budget cuts.

Baton Rouge's own Gray Lady gets it right: "Behind a bureaucratic façade, the reality is that Gov. Bobby Jindal has again proposed cutting state government’s support for higher education, forcing colleges to make up reduced state aid with increased tuition and fees."

Advocate editorialists point out that the governor's budget, which they call "Category 5 political spin," includes a $50 million mid-year reduction from this year, and relies on tuition increases to avoid going into negative territory.

"Louisiana’s future is the poorer for this," the editorial concludes. "But it will provide endless material for college courses of the future, in which the political abuse of language is discussed."

Bad news trifecta for Jindal's voucher scheme

It hasn't been the best week for Gov. Bobby Jindal's voucher scheme. His plan was blasted from several different directions because it lacks accountability.

On Monday, Advocate reporter Will Sentell posted this story, saying that school superintendents oppose the voucher plan because private and religious schools that accept vouchers will not be held to the same standards as public schools.

The president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents told Sentell that public schools are given letter grades based on their performance scores, and that all students in public schools must take standardized tests. Unless voucher schools are held to the same standards, he said, parents cannot make informed choices about where to send their children to school.

Also on Monday, the head of the Coalition for Louisiana Progress told the Press Club of Baton Rouge that the governor's voucher scheme is unworkable, according to this story by Advocate bureau chief Mark Ballard.

Melissa Flournoy, who once served as a state representative, told the press club that students "could actually end up in schools that are worse than what they had in the public sector system. At the end of the day vouchers, however appealing they might sound, they will not be a viable public sector response.”

Flournoy said that vouchers would divert money from public schools, and that it would not be possible to find private and religious school seats for the 380,000 students who could be eligible for vouchers under Jindal's plan.

The governor's scheme hit a trifecta of sorts when the Louisiana Budget Project released this study, headlined "Governor Jindal's Voucher Plan Gets an 'F' for Accountability."

The first paragraph of the report sums it all up:

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plan to dramatically increase the number of students who can attend private schools at public expense is missing a key safeguard: strong oversight and accountability to ensure kids are learning and that taxpayer money is being well-spent. Unfortunately, the governor has rejected all suggestions that private schools be held accountable for their performance in the same way as public schools. Instead, his plans would hand over public resources to private schools with no strings attached.

Jindal is cherry-picking for vouchers

As Gov. Bobby Jindal ramps up his scheme to spend public education funds on tuition for private and religious schools, evidence is mounting that vouchers do little or nothing to actually improve academic achievement.

That was true last summer, when former BESE member Leslie Jacobs' Educate Now organization produced this study. It revealed that in New Orleans, where Gov. Jindal rammed through a voucher program a couple of years ago, "for the second year in a row, students participating in the voucher program performed worse than students in the RSD!"

And it's true now, as this story by Times-Picayune reporter Andrew Vanacore demonstrates.

Vanacore says the administration "has cherry-picked the rosiest figures" in pushing for a radical, state-wide expansion of the voucher program.

The reporter cites expert researchers who say the New Orleans voucher experiment simple does not provide enough data to draw reliable conclusions about its success.

Jindal's main argument in favor of vouchers is that parents should have more choice. But the article points out that the governor's voucher program does not give parents the facts they need to make an informed choice.

Writes Vanacore:

The absence of hard data may complicate the politics of trying to pass an expansion of the voucher program through the Legislature. Even some of the governor's natural allies, including backers of the charter school movement in New Orleans, are concerned about whether private schools will be held
accountable for the results they produce.
While students on vouchers in New Orleans take the LEAP exam, the schools they attend do not get school performance scores, which would require scores from every student in the building. Without a performance score, the state cannot assign those private schools the letter grades that public schools receive.
All of which leaves parents with less information about how a particular private school is performing.

Outrage du jour: Jindal turns down millions for pre-K

Shocking many in the education community, Gov. Bobby Jindal and his underlings refuse to apply for some $60 million in federal early education funds, as reported here by The Advocate's Will Sentell.

Despite a wealth of data proving beyond doubt that pre-K intervention is the best way to ensure future academic success, the Jindal administration has already frozen LA4, a nationally respected program. The result is that tens of thousands of children remain on waiting lists for this service.

Now the administration doesn't even deign to ask for the available federal grant, claiming that it comes with "strings." All that means is that the state has to prove a need - no heavy lift there - and that we have proper organization for our pre-K services.

Just another shameful episode for a state that lags the nation in just about every positive measure.

Post-vacation catch-up edition

The world kept turning while EdLog was on brief hiatus. Here are some of the nuggets we missed:

Jindal's response to the Red Tape Act being declared unconstitutional: While educators celebrated Judge Mike Caldwell's decision ruling the "Red Tape Reduction and Local Waiver Empowerment Act" unconstitutional, Gov. Jindal's PR team went into spin mode.

A spokesman told AP reporter Melinda Deslatte for this article that it is "ironic that the unions would obstruct the very reforms that will help teachers."

The reforms he is talking about would allow school boards to ignore laws concerning tenure, class size, curriculum, discipline, certification, special education and a host of others.

What is really ironic is that the governor's office needs a lesson in civics from the union.

BESE candidate wants to abolish teacher tenure: It is a shame that any serious candidate for the state education board would campaign on a platform of abolishing teacher tenure. When that candidate used to be a teacher herself, it verges on the bizarre.

Yet that is what former Teacher of the Year Holly Boffy told the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge, reported here by Will Sentell of The Advocate.

Boffy is running the District 7 BESE seat currently held by Dale Bayard of Sulphur. She is currently working as a functionary for the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana , also known as A+PEL.

Higher education faculty layoffs: If education is the engine that will drive our economy out of the dumpster, why are we firing so many higher education faculty? Is this what politicians mean when they say we can do more with less? Advocate reporter Jordan Blum spoke with some very upset professors.

Charter school scandals erupt (part 1): Teachers at Baton Rouge's Capitol High Academy charter school were nonplussed when they found out that they won't be paid on schedule, as reported here by Charles Lussiere of The Advocate.

The charter is held by a non-profit organization, 100 Black Men. However, the organization outsourced the operation of the school to a for-profit education corporation called EdisonLearning. Last February, 100 Black Men severed their connection with EdisonLearning, citing the company's failure to provide an appropriate audit.

Charter school scandals erupt (part 2): This one is complicated, and includes hints of charter school connections to an Islamic movement, rape, bribery and the firing of two education department officials, one of whom tried to warn about the problems a year ago.

Start your journey into this twisted tale here, with Times-Picayune reporter Andrew Vanacore's story about the firing of Folwell Dunbar, who reported to his superiors a year ago that there were problems at Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in New Orleans.

According to Vanacore, "Dunbar concluded last year that Abramson, which has connections to Turkish-run businesses and charter schools in other states, was at the very least 'terribly mismanaged' and recommended that the state board of education take away its charter."

Vanacore reported that Dunbar was offered a bribe to ignore problems at the school. According to this Associated Press report, those problems included inappropriate sexual contact between kindergarten students, a potential rape, unstaffed classrooms and "potential cheating in science fair competitions."

Abramson has been closed while the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education conducts a thorough investigation, and Dunbar's boss, Jacob Landry, has also been fired.

But the story doesn't end yet. The Pelican Education Foundation, which operates Abramson, also runs the Kenilworth Science and Technology charter school in Baton Rouge. That school is now also being investigated, according to Advocate reporter Will Sentell.

And what of the Islamic angle? Vanacore followed his Abramson story with this report about the Pelican Education Foundation's connection to the Gulen movement, a Turkish group that takes its inspiration from Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen.

While spokesmen for Pelican deny any connection with Gulen, Vanacore's article is loaded with subtle hints connecting the school to the Turkish movement. Hints like one school board member saying, "I'm on the advisory board of the schools -- the Gulen schools in Louisiana."

By coincidence, this article, originally posted in the Church of England newspaper, provides some background into the Gulen movement, whose founder has variously been described as the "world’s top public intellectual" and as the "world’s most dangerous Islamist."

All things considered, it's fair to say that July has not been an auspicious month for Louisiana's charter schools.

Jindal touting education in reelection bid: In this column, Advocate bureau chief Mark Ballard explored Gov. Bobby Jindal's claim that he is "strengthening schools" in the state.

The governor's volunteers are handing out door hangers touting the governor's accomplishments, but ignoring the cuts to education that have left the Minimum Foundation Program frozen for three years, decimated higher education and required local school boards to pick up some $83 million worth of programs formerly funded by the state.

As LFT President Steve Monaghan told Ballard, the governor's "reality hasn't kept pace with the rhetoric."

Jindal protects his secrecy and punishes his enemies: Veteran Lake Charles journalist Jim Beam watched as Gov. Jindal "used his veto pen to protect the secrecy of his administration’s operations and to punish his enemies."

In this column, Beam took the governor to task for vetoing a bill by Sen. Butch Gautreaux that would have helped put the state teacher retirement system on a sounder financial footing, calling it "a perfect example of how the governor punishes his enemies even when others get hurt in the process."

The governor also vetoed a good bill by Sen. Robert Adley, a lawmaker who has tried to push for more transparency in Jindal's official records, according to Beam.

"Jindal should be above this kind of petty politics, but it has become a characteristic of his administration," wrote Beam. "You would think a public official with the popular support the governor enjoys would be more open in his operations and more magnanimous toward his critics. "

Bobby Jindal's big school flip-fop

Just a year ago, Gov. Bobby Jindal and his minions seemed to believe that school boards were the root of all evil. So incompetent and intrusive were school boards that the governor and Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek prevailed upon freshman legislator Steve Carter to introduce a package of bills that would have stripped local school boards of most of their authority. Joining Jindal and Pastorek in their crusade against local school boards were the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Council for a Better Louisiana.

This year, Jindal and his cohorts are flipping like flapjacks. At a press conference attended by Pastorek, Carter LABI and CABL, the governor announced that there are too many restrictions on local school boards. His new legislative package seeks to empower school boards by allowing them to opt out of state laws and policies deemed "burdensome regulations ... that may hinder academic growth."

Judging from the governor's press release, it looks like one big target of the legislation is teacher tenure. That is another big flip-flop. The state's Jindal-approved application for federal Race to the Top funds aims to ensure that tenure “is a meaningful and active process” with “respect and value.”

The administration is no stranger to hypocritical flip-flops, though. This is the same bunch that touts education as the key to economic development while simultaneously stripping higher education budgets, eliminating programs and whole departments.

LSU and Southern faculty leaders fight budget cuts

To their great credit, faculty leaders at Louisiana universities are fighting the budget cuts proposed by Governor Bobby Jindal. As Advocate reporter Jordan Blum writes here, LSU Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope and Southern Faculty Senate President Sudhir Trivedi are protesting teh goverbnor's plan to cut between $212 million and $382 million from higher education's budget this year.

LFT President Steve Monaghan agrees with the profesors, saying the state's failure to properly fund eduation at all levels contributes to our loss of productive citizens moving in droves to other states;

Here is the text of Steve's letter:

Dear Editor

Louisiana State University Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope and Southern University Sudhir Trivedi are to be applauded for their leadership in opposition to devastating cuts to higher education.

Their outrage is not unwarranted, particularly when one considers these cuts in the context of the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks, tax deductions, and credits that have been provided for dubious purposes and often with little demonstrated need over the last few years.

While Louisiana’s coffers swelled as a result of rising oil prices and the infusion of billions of dollars in post-hurricane reconstruction, the LFT warned against the expansion and acceleration of enormous tax breaks for big business. We opposed the repeal of earlier tax reforms that had helped to diversify the state’s revenue base. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions in revenues were forfeited while a very long list of unmet and deferred needs continued to be deferred and unmet.
Professors Cope and Trivedi and the faculties of both institutions are wise to react swiftly and forcefully to possible cuts of $212 to $382 million dollars. The Louisiana Federation of Teachers stands with them in opposition to such draconian cuts to higher education.

In fact, the LFT has urged our governor to articulate a bolder, broader vision for Louisiana, particularly in the area of public education. We believe that this vision must include a recognition that Louisiana continues to suffer an outmigration of its best and brightest because of its historical failure to invest in its people and its infrastructure. Our state failed to embrace public policies that contribute to a higher quality of life for all citizens.

Let us move our public discourse beyond administrative nostrums to “learn to do more with less.” That prescription has led us to ignore pressing needs for far too long. Certainly, every tax dollar must be spent responsibly, strategically, and to build a better Louisiana. But the state must have enough of those dollars to conduct the people’s business.

Leaders must encourage us to dance to forms of music yet to be heard. Educators and many of citizens have heard a sad symphony for far too long. We’re ready to dance to something a bit more upbeat and much bolder.

Steve Monaghan, President
Louisiana Federation of Teachers

LFT President calls for bolder, broader approach to education

This is a condensed version of LFT President Steve Monaghan's most recent LeaderLetter. To read the whole document, please click here.

On December 19, 2008, in anticipation of the daunting fiscal challenges before us, I wrote to Governor Jindal to share the Federation’s grave concerns and to urge that he embrace a bolder, broader vision for the education of all children...

I explained that a bolder, broader vision and approach to public education would compel all stake-holders to work together to secure the funding necessary to deliver that which is eloquently and nobly promoted in the Preamble of Article 8 of the Louisiana State Constitution: “The goal of the public education system is to provide learning environments and experiences, at all stages of human development, that are humane, just, and designed to promote excellence in order that every individual may be afforded an equal opportunity to develop to his full potential.”

As I shared with our governor and I am confident that you will agree: We certainly have not delivered on the promise of our constitution. And, until we do, we should examine every tax break, deduction, exemption, and abatement through an educational prism. We should ask how much each will cost the children of our state in lost opportunity? How much will lost revenues cost all of us in quality of life?

Finally, I concluded my communication to our governor with a critical question that we must ask until it is answered. What would it really cost to provide what Superintendent Pastorek has referred to as a “world-class education?” Until we ascertain that cost, we’ll continue to provide something far less than a world class educational opportunity to most of Louisiana’s children.

In March, Governor Jindal will release his executive budget. It will signal a direction and suggest a vision. On April 27, 2009, a forty-five day legislative fiscal session begins, and so will our fight will be to either support a bolder, broader vision or to present one.

The high (paid) and the mighty

Journalism at its best points out contradictions, and Advocate reporter Michelle Millhollen points well in this article about the salaries paid to the highest ranking members of state government.

If you want, skip the first few paragraphs that talk about the $70,000-plus paid to college professors and researchers at facilities like the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Or at least compare their salaries to the earnings of others in their fields around the nation. Louisiana does not stack up well.

The contradictions begin to show when we get to the salaries paid to political appointees close to the governor's office. The well-connected include 20 of the governor's closest aides, who earn more than Bobby Jindal's $130,000 salary, and the 56 people in the Division of Administration who earn more than $100,000.

At the top of the totem pole are folks like Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret, whose $319,999 salary is among the highest in the nation, or Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek, whose $341,170 tops all others in the South.

When the governor bumped their salaries last year, he said it was because you have to pay the top salaries to get the top people in the posts. That is a concept that does not trickle down to the ranks of educators and other public servants in Louisiana.

As some lawmakers point out in the article, the biggest contradiction is still to come. Because of the current economic crisis, layoffs are under consideration on the lower rungs of the state employment ladder, but none in the rarefied atmosphere of the administration's highest levels.

To see who in state government earns more than $70,00 per year, please click here.

Pastorek fires shot over school boards' bow

If the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's meeting room was filled to capacity with angry citizens about this, just wait until hearings begin on Superintendent Paul Pastorek's plan to gut the authority of local school boards.

As Advocate reporter Will Sentell writes here, a scheme is afoot that would cede most school board members' power to local superintendents, take away the salaries for board members, put limits on their terms of office and establish educational requirements for elected board members.

Each of these issues could be debated on its merits. But taken as a whole, this push will be seen as nothing less than a declaration of war on local school boards by the state superintendent.

As the story develops, it will be interesting to see who takes sides in the fight. The only BESE member interviewed in Sentell's article is Tammie McDaniel of Oak Ridge, who supports Pastorek's initiative. She is one of three members who are appointed by Governor Bobby Jindal, and not elected from a district. That would tend to indicate that the plan has the governor's approval. And As Sentell reports, a powerful business lobby and public interest group have lined up in favor of changing the rules for school boards.

What about the elected BESE members? Some of them have strong ties to local school boards, and there is little to indicate that they will fall in line behind their superintendent. Thus far, Pastorek has been able to get a majority to support his agenda. Can he keep that edge, or will members see this move as an overreach?

Don't think that the state's 70 school boards will give up their power without a fight. In many parishes, the school board is the largest employer, with the biggest budget. Board members are closer to their constituencies than BESE members, and may be able to generate a grass-roots opposition that will bring considerable clout to the fight.

The statewide organization representing board members, the Louisiana School Boards Association, has been little heard from in recent legislative sessions. This is the kind of issue that could reawaken LSBA and make a player once again in capitol politics.

Then there is the legislature, which will have to vote on Pastorek's proposals. A good number of them are former school board members and are loyal to their political roots. Relations between lawmakers and BESE have often been strained in the past, and this is an issue that could easy inflame old wounds even as it opens new ones.

Factor in the fact that some legislators are laying in the gap for Governor Jindal because of his bungled handling of last year's pay raise, and the stage is set for a class-A donnybrook. Sad thing is, the fight will have much less to do with good education policy than with score settling and power grabbing among the political class.

Weapons of mass distraction

Illusionists - from the rich and famous like David Copperfield to the 3-card monte scammers on the corner - know that the secret of their trade is distraction. Get the mark looking away for an instant while the switch is made.

That surely must be what Gov. Bobby Jindal has in mind with his new attack on educators, reported here by Monroe News-Star reporter Ken Stickney. With all that's going wrong in the state, the governor declared that making new laws about teachers abusing children is a major legislative priority.

Don't get us wrong, sexual abuse of a child is awful, no matter who does it, be it teacher, preacher, scoutmaster, parent or relative (and in this case, Jindal's only focus is on public school teachers). But the fact is, we have an abundance of laws, both state and federal, to deal with sexual predators, including teachers. And those who are caught pay a heavy price, including prison, loss of teaching credentials and huge civil settlements.

The truth is that more laws won't stop predators, who do what they do because of an overwhelming compulsion. The focus should, instead, be on increasing awareness, improving methods of detection, and better education about the importance of reporting abuse.

Those have no value to a demagogue, however. For whatever his real reason, whether to distract attention from real problems, or to further demonize public education, we should understand that the governor's proposal has little to do with the protection of children.

Looking back, looking ahead

As Times-Picayune reporter Jan Moller puts it in this article, Gov. Bobby Jindal was at the center of a whirlwind in the first year of his term:

Since taking office a year ago this week, Bobby Jindal presided over three legislative sessions, weathered two major hurricanes, was courted to run for vice president on the Republican ticket and endured the public furor that ensued when the Legislature voted to more than double its take-home pay.

The part about the legislature and the pay raise wasn't the lowest point in Jindal's first year (although that is probably the bit that will make his relationship with lawmakers the most difficult in the coming session).

The worst was his support for the orgy of tax breaks that left our state vulnerable to the economic collapse now looming. After voters decided in 2000 to make our tax code a bit more progressive and less dependent on the petroleum industry, Jindal willingly gave in to the demagogues and helped undo the reforms of the Stelly plan.

Interviewing LFT President Steve Monaghan for the story, Moller came away with this nugget:

Monaghan faulted Jindal and the Legislature for repealing the 2002 "Stelly" income-tax increase, which will cost the state an estimated $360 million next year. Combined with other tax cuts ushered through by Jindal, the move will exacerbate the budget shortfall and will make it harder to finance public education, Monaghan said.

"All of these tax credits went hastily through the process when
Louisiana looked at itself as being flush," Monaghan said. "Now we're looking at the state in the position that perhaps it wouldn't have had to be in if it hadn't been so cavalier with its resources."

Grasshoppers, ants and Louisiana

Better than 2,500 years ago, Aesop wrote the fable of the grasshopper and the ants. While the grasshopper frittered away the abundance of the day and saved nothing for the future, the industrious ants planned for the coming winter. Long story short: the grasshopper died cold, wet and hungry. And even though the ants had sacrificed a bit of comfort in the good times, they were well-prepared for the bad.

With that in mind, check out Associated Press reporter Melinda DesLatte’s column about the Louisiana Legislature’s (and Governor Jindal’s) recent irresponsibility. Big tax cuts and giveaways are fun when the state treasury is flush, but now we’re facing that cold, wet winter like a bunch of shivering grasshoppers.