Louisiana’s most improved public school shuts its doors

Louisiana’s perfect storm - an ill-conceived school reform experiment coupled with drastic budget reductions - has claimed another victim. The most improved public school in the state has been shuttered by the East Baton Rouge Parish school Board.

As reported here by Charles Lussiere of The Advocate, EBR Lab Academy was closed because the state seized control of the facility in which it was housed, and the school board’s budget could not bear the cost of a school that gave intensive assistance to kids who needed it.

As Lussiere writes, “EBR Lab shared a campus with Istrouma High and both were run by the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, but the demise of those two schools was set in motion by RSD.”

A struggling Istrouma High School was taken over by the Recovery School District. EBR Lab could not remain at Istrouma, which was no longer part of the Baton Rouge school system, and board members saw a chance to save $1 million by simply closing the successful experimental school. Like most other school districts, Baton Rouge is suffering because of Governor Bobby Jindal’s refusal to raise education spending along with the cost of inflation.

And so more than 200 kids who were achieving their goals have been scattered, and their faculty has moved on to other jobs in other schools, and a successful public school is gone.

Truth in advertising: Chas Roemer edition

To see Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Chas Roemer's TV re-election ad, you'd think he is shocked - shocked, I tell you - by Louisiana's "bloated" education bureaucracy.

Standing with the wife and kids, he says of Louisiana's $9 billion education budget, "we should put that money into the classroom not into the pockets of bureaucrats.”

And yet, as part of the Jindal administration's majority on the BESE board, Roemer voted to make former State Superintendent Paul Pastorek the highest paid education superintendent in the nation at over $300,000 per year, and Roemer voted to pay Recovery School District Superintendent John White some $250,000 per year.

The state department of education, which Roemer's board oversees, now has 45 staff members who make more than $100,0000 per year.

Bloated bureaucracy? Take a peek in the mirror.

Shoe on other foot: cuts pinch RSD, vouchers

The biggest story so far in this legislative session has been the disastrous budget cuts proposed by Gov. Jindal, reductions that affect health care, education, recreation, public safety and other important quality-of-life issues.

At the same time, legislators are proposing more and more expensive tax cuts, without asking for any new revenues to fill the budget gaps.

A sideshow in this disastrous legislative session has emerged. There is a budgetary tug-of-war underway between the governor's office and the legislature. In the process, some sacred cows are getting bled.

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee slashed the Department of Education's budget, taking aim at programs favored by Governor Bobby Jindal.

In response, yesterday Gov. Jindal sent a couple of his minions out to defend his personal favorites.

Acting Superintendent of Education Ollie Tyler made an impassioned plea to restore funding for nearly $10 million in public funds that are funneled to religious and private schools in New Orleans.

Tyler said that defunding the voucher scheme would force 1,600 New Orleans students "to return to failing schools."

That statement required an amazing reversal of logic. Only moments before, Tyler had told reporters that the state Recovery School District - which would presumably absorb the displaced voucher students - has made "remarkable" progress, and that "gains in the RSD are significantly higher than the state average."

Tyler also complained about a planned $11 million reduction in the RSD budget. The money would be used to pay for mandatory building insurance in the district. She said, "it's unreasonable and unfair to shift this burden to schools and students who are already struggling to overcome very difficult circumstances."

It seems that if there is one thing the governor and legislature agree upon, there will be no new revenues adopted during this session. The unfairness that Superintendent Tyler perceives is a direct product of that agreement.

Gannett reporter Mike Hasten covered the press conference for this story.