Bad Law forces good people to the courtroom, again

(Baton Rouge – August 29, 2013) Trying to forestall an expected avalanche of lawsuits against local school boards, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers will ask a state judge to rule that Louisiana’s teacher tenure law violates due process guarantees in both the Louisiana and United States Constitutions.

Federation President Steve Monaghan said that his executive board has voted unanimously to amend an active lawsuit to address fatal flaws in the poorly drafted and hastily enacted Act 1 of 2012.

“A proverbial super storm is forming in school districts across our state,” said Monaghan. “It’s the product of a flawed state teacher evaluation system and revisions in due process rules that are devoid of fairness and reason.”

Monaghan said that real harm is already occurring as dozens of teacher evaluation grievances are being processed by local school systems. Many of these could ultimately result in court cases.

“Unless Act 1 is once again ruled unconstitutional,” Monaghan said, “teachers will increasingly be forced into the courtroom in district-by-district challenges. This scenario will rip communities apart and drain limited resources needed to educate children.”

“It is unfortunate that school boards will be compelled to bear the brunt of these contentious proceedings, because local administrations and local school boards did not cause this train wreck,” he said. “They are in an untenable position. They are compelled to follow the law, even bad law.”

In June of 2012, LFT challenged the constitutionality of Act 1, the so-called tenure law, and Act 2, which set up the state’s controversial school voucher scheme. Last March, 19th Judicial District Judge Michael Caldwell ruled Act 1 unconstitutional because it violated a provision that forbids bundling multiple objects in one piece of legislation.

In the Act 2 case, Judge Tim Kelley ruled that using public education funds to pay for school vouchers is unconstitutional, a decision that was upheld by the State Supreme Court.

Late in the 2013 legislative session, after affirming Judge Kelly’s ruling, the Supreme Court sent the Act 1 case back to Judge Caldwell’s court for further consideration.

The Federation will again urge Judge Caldwell to rule that Act 1 unconstitutionally bundled multiple objects into one bill. The Federation is amending its petition to include the complaint that Act 1 violates the due process rights of teachers under the Louisiana and United States Constitutions.

The lawsuit will be amended to include the following specific complaints:

• Under Act 1 (2012), a tenured teacher accused of being ineffective or facing any other charge is afforded a hearing only after the teacher has been fired. The Act authorizes superintendents to terminate a tenured teacher before any hearing is held, which violates the basic principles of due process.
• Under Act 1 (2012) The post-termination hearing is conducted by a three-person panel consisting of one person appointed by the superintendent, one person appointed by the teacher’s principal and one individual chosen by the teacher. The panel is decidedly weighted against the teacher.
• Under Act 1 (2012), the panel’s role is merely advisory and holds no authority to reverse, amend, or otherwise alter the decision of the superintendent. A toothless panel makes a mockery of an already poisoned process.

“It is well established fact that very important laws were ill conceived, poorly drafted, and hastily enacted with little public input,” Monaghan said. “As a result, there has been chaos and rancor contributing to a dramatic increase in the number of teachers leaving the profession.”

The LFT president said that lawmakers missed an opportunity to find remedies during the 2013 session, when a bill was introduced to postpone the effects of the state’s new evaluation system for one year.

“The delay would have allowed time for the legislature and state board of education to tweak or fix the evaluation system,” Monaghan said, “and allow time for cooler heads to infuse fair process into the revised tenure law.

“However, HB 160, which was unanimously approved by the House Education Committee, and passed by the full House by 102 to zero was killed by four members of the Senate Education Committee,” Monaghan said. “That single failure compels us to file our amended petition.”

Recently, a Monroe district judge ruled in favor of a Louisiana Association of Educators lawsuit claiming that the tenure provisions of Act 1 violate teacher rights.

“Consequentially, we now face potential lawsuits that no one wants in every judicial district in Louisiana,” Monaghan said. “Without a reasonable resolution, public education will get bogged down in court and the unintended consequences will be innumerable.”

LFT president rails against DOE’s $128 million administrative budget

As the House Appropriations Committee began its study of the state’s $24.7 billion general fund budget on Tuesday, LFT President Steve Monaghan asked members to closely monitor the Department of Educaiton’s $128 million administrative budget.

Monaghan, the only representative of a teacher organization to address the committee, said that many aspects of the department’s budget are problematic. As an example, he cited a “lack of transparency” in the way the department hires highly paid administrators.

“Once upon a time we at least know who was being hired to do what,” Monaghan said. “Now it seems that we discover those things without any rhyme or reason.”

Monaghan noted that funding for public schools through the Minimum Foundation Program has been frozen for the past five years, even as the department brought in minimally qualified administrators at high salaries.

“The department’s priorities seem to be more ideological than instructional,” he said.

Monaghan’s complaint echoed published reports that top hires at the department are being brought in to sell the administration’s privatization and voucher plans at the expense of traditional public schools.

“There was a time when research drove decisions,” Monaghan told the committee. “It doesn’t seem that research is driving decisions now.”

“I bring a message from the classroom that conditions are getting much worse,” Monaghan told lawmakers. “Please be watchdogs and help us with this fight.”

To view Monaghan's testimony, please click here. His testimony begins at about the 2:17:52 mark.

WWL-TV op-ed: Jindal plan shows disdain for teachers

Check out this op-ed by LFT President Steve Monaghan on the WWL-TV Web site!

When cultural historian Jacques Barzun wrote "Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition," he could have been describing the education “reform” movement pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal and his allies in Louisiana. Jindal’s approach to education is typified by an apparent disdain for those who have made the profession their life’s calling.

The governor’s attitude about teachers emerged in a speech before the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry a year ago, in which he first outlined the radical overhaul that would become the hallmark of his education agenda. Jindal inaccurately and unfairly asserted to those influential business leaders that teachers “are given lifetime job protection…and short of selling drugs in the workplace or beating up” their students, teachers couldn’t be fired.

“Not only is this not a factual statement,”I said at the time, “but evoking images of those specific behaviors in reference to educators is unjust and insulting.”

The governor has often been quoted as saying that, prior to his overhaul, Louisiana teachers retained their jobs simply because they “keep breathing.” As proof, he and his supporters said that only a small percentage of teachers had been found incompetent and fired.

That ignored the fact that about half of all teachers leave the profession within five years of entering it. What other profession suffers such an exodus? One would naturally expect a higher level of competency among those who survived past their fifth anniversary.

As part of this assault on public school teachers, Act 1 (2012), a hodge-podge of policies that all but abolished teachers’ due process rights and tied their professional futures to an unproven new evaluation system, was steam rolled through the legislative process.

Simultaneously and in the same manner, Governor Jindal pushed Act 2 (2012), through the legislature. This bill comprises the most overreaching efforts at privatizing public education ever conceived in the United States.

Act 2 was so big, so bloated with various unrelated schemes, and was rushed through the system with so little scrutiny, that few paid much attention to its details.

The act is best known for funneling public education dollars to private and religious schools. Some of those have been shown to be woefully inadequate in curricula, facilities and, ironically, teacher quality.

But Act 2 encompasses much more than vouchers, and provides public funding for all manner of private and quasi-public education alternatives, without appropriate safeguards to assure the instructional quality of the programs.

Under these so called reforms, public tax dollars flow to largely unregulated voucher schools and other so-called “course providers.” (Those can be any individual, business or institution that has an idea for providing an academic course and receives approval from the governor’s education department.)

Act 2 is replete with examples of disdain for teachers as well as for public education in general. For example, the act deletes any requirement that teachers in charter schools be certified, but grants automatic certification to anyone who is approved as a “course provider.”

If non-traditional schools are to be part of the reform mix, then there should be ways to compare their achievement with that of public schools. The governor and his allies steadfastly refuse to consider measurements on privatized education that allow the public to accurately assess the academic results in those schools.

That coincides with a second hallmark of the Jindal agenda: a blind faith that private is better than public, and that profit is a guarantee of quality.

Across the United States, some $500 billion a year is spent on public education. In Louisiana, our Minimum Foundation Program budget is $3.41 billion. The privatizers want a big piece of that, and have donated millions to politicians who support this agenda. They have been rewarded with an astoundingly lax system of accountability.

The purpose of any real reform should be to guarantee all that children have equal access to high quality, well resourced public schools regardless of geography or economic circumstances. The reforms should be based on research which demonstrates the efficacy of the program or policy. No such research was presented to support these reforms as they were pushed into law.

So there you have it. An apparent lack of respect if not outright disdain for the profession of education, in combination with extreme ideological and profit motives have spawned these misbegotten reforms.

Fortunately for parents and the taxpaying public, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers’ constitutional challenges to this agenda have served to heighten public awareness and to encourage greater scrutiny.
Even though appeals are pending, there is a growing awareness that this agenda is not the right direction for education reform to take in Louisiana.

Our message to lawmakers is simple: these laws are terribly broken, and we're depending upon legislators to fix them.

The real shame in Jindal's Washington speech

Governor Bobby Jindal says the lawsuit filed by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and others to challenge the constitutionality of his voucher scheme is “shameful.” But what’s really a shame is the way our governor disdained the rule of law and readily available research in his crusade to privatize public education.

Jindal spoke on Tuesday at a Washington, D.C. meeting of the right-wing Brookings Institution, which convened that day to praise the state’s Recovery School District for becoming what Brookings claims is the best in the nation in terms of school choice.

That claim is debatable: RSD has some of the lowest achievement scores in the state, many parents complain that they can’t enroll their children in New Orleans’ high-achieving charter schools, and the district’s record with children with exceptionalities is spotty.

Jindal did not limit his remarks to the RSD, however. As Times-Picayune Washington correspondent Bruce Alpert reports here, the governor took advantage of the national forum to defend his voucher plan and bash teacher unions for pointing out its legal flaws.

That the governor would change the subject from choice in the RSD to his vision of a nationwide plan to pay for private and religious school tuition says much more about Jindal’s national ambitions than about his concern for schools in Louisiana.

Jindal said the union “is working hard every day to make sure that you do not ever get the opportunity to get your child out of that failing school…”

In the reality based world, as LFT President Steve Monaghan pointed out, the union’s objective in filing our lawsuit was to uphold the Constitution of the State of Louisiana. It was in fact a conservative Republican judge who ruled on November 30 that the governor’s voucher plan violates a section of the constitution that reserves public school funds for public schools.

A pilot plan for vouchers, enacted in 2008 and funded separately through the state general fund, was never the subject of a constitutional challenge, although the LFT did oppose it as a matter of flawed policy.


If Gov. Jindal wants to blame someone for the outcome of the lawsuit, he need only consult a mirror.

The governor’s Washington speech reinforced a few things that we already know about his agenda.

First, that his political goals in life lie far outside the boundaries of our state. “Do not lay your head on the pillow at night believing that America [not just Louisiana] provides equal opportunity in education. We do not," he told the Brookings crowd.

Second, that Jindal believes the privatization of education is the only way to guarantee all children a high-quality education. On Tuesday, that required a delicate dance in which the governor had to accept Brookings’ praise of the state’s public school choice options while at the same time condemning public education as a failure.

His almost religious faith in the efficacy of private education also is belied by research that shows voucher schools to have produced results about the same or even lower than their public counterparts.

Third, that Jindal believes teacher unions are the educational equivalent of the Antichrist. He does not want to hear that we, too, have ideas about school reform. Ours are research-based, educationally sound and proven to work. He does not want to believe that we, too, love children. He does not want to believe that we want schools to succeed.

The problem with beliefs that are not grounded in reality is that they lead the believer into error, and that is the territory in which Gov. Jindal now finds himself.

At one point in his speech, the governor called on teachers to “peel the scales off their eyes.” What he does not seem to realize is that the scales have, indeed, fallen from teachers’ eyes. And when they look at Gov. Jindal, they do not like what they see.

Monaghan to whiners: It's time for some introspection

Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan has responded to whiners in the administration who blame the LFT and others for a judicial ruling against the way Gov. Bobby Jindal chose to fund his voucher scheme.

In a letter to The Advocate, Monaghan asks if the conservative Republican judge who ruled against the Jindal administration is party to a conspiracy "to get in the way of student achievement," a theory fabricated by Superintendent of Education John White.

And while the governor chooses to describe the ruling as "wrongheaded" and "a travesty," Monaghan wants to know if Jindal has access to a mirror.

"Now, isn’t it time for a bit of introspection and reflection on the part of those charged with driving the train?" Monaghan writes. "Tagging Judge Kelley as 'wrong-headed' and the LFT as a 'hindrance' strongly suggests that no responsibility has been taken and nothing has been learned."

Monaghan's letter has a worthy companion on today's editorial page, with former Jefferson Parish School Board Member Terry Verigan weighing in on White's history of "converting public schools into private enterprise charter schools."

Verigan says of White, "During his brief 100-day tenure as deputy chancellor of the New York City Schools, he managed to alienate parents and teachers alike with his aggressive and thoughtless campaign to 'reform' the schools."

"The fact that he was never a school principal and was barely a classroom teacher contribute to his misdirected assault on public education in our state," writes Verigan. "John White came to Louisiana unprepared and having a personal agenda that had little to do with improving public schools. That Bobby Jindal placed him in this critical role says much about the governor’s superficial interest in public service and the welfare of Louisiana’s children."

Evaluation law to be tested in court

LFT challenge to Act 1 will be heard December 17

One of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s most controversial education initiatives will be tested in court on December 17, when the Louisiana Federation of Teachers asks a Baton Rouge judge to toss out Act 1 of the 2012 legislature.

The law links virtually every aspect of a teacher’s professional life to a new evaluation system. In a lawsuit filed last June, the Federation charged that Act 1 violates the state constitution.

According to LFT President Steve Monaghan, Act 1 bundles what should have been a number of separate bills into one instrument. By rushing the bill through the legislature in the opening days of the last session, Monaghan said, Gov. Jindal treated the constitution “like little more than a list of inconvenient suggestions.”

In a motion for summary judgment to be heard in Baton Rouge’s 19^th Judicial District Court, LFT is asking that the new law be tossed because it conflicts with Article 3 Section 15(A) of the state constitution, which clearly states that bills “shall be confined to one object.”

Act 1 radically changes at least eight different existing laws “which have no reasonable relationship with, nor natural connection to, each other…” according to the LFT’s plea.

“By cramming so many objectives into the bill, public comment and debate were stifled,” Monaghan said. “Legislators were given little information about the bill, and appeared intimidated into passing it without adequate debate and oversight.”

Some of the LFT’s specific challenges to Act 1’s bundled objectives, each of which should have been a separate bill, include:

• It changes the contractual relationship between local school boards and their superintendents.
• It strips the authority to hire and fire teachers from school boards and gives it to superintendents.
• It gives superintendents sole authority to determine reduction in force policies.
• It creates a new section of law regarding how teacher salaries will be determined.
• It changes due process rights that teachers have under law.

The Federation filed the lawsuit on June 7, at the same time as a suit challenging Act 2, the governor’s “choice” or school voucher bill.

Other organizations, including the Louisiana School Boards Association and the Louisiana Association of Educators, later joined the Federation’s suit challenging the “choice” act. It is slated to go to trial on November 28.

LFT remains the sole organization with a lawsuit pending against Act 1.

Click here to read the LFT plea for summary judgment.
Click here for the original reports about the Federation's lawsuits.
Click here for recent news about the Act 2 lawsuit.

Hypocrisy in high places

The State Department of Education raises issues of hypocrisy in this story by Advocate reporter Will Sentell, in which vows are made to ensure that every pre-kindergarten school that takes public tuition money will be held to rigorous standards.

“Every program that takes public dollars will be held to a common standard,” Superintendent of Education White told the reporter.

Thanks to the superintendent’s deep concern for the well-being of our state’s smallest learners, schools that provide pre-K instruction will all be assigned letter grades similar to the labels pasted onto public elementary and secondary schools.

Standards and letter grades are important, Supt. White indicated, as parents make choices about their children’s education.

“There are a lot of different choices out there, but children and their families do not have equal access and quality varies widely,” White told the reporter.

But what’s good for the little-bitties apparently does not work for their K-12 siblings, according to Supt. White and his colleagues on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being diverted away from public schools to pay tuition in private and religious schools and for “course providers” that come nowhere close to the standards demanded of public schools.

Last week, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers forced BESE to hold a hearing to accept suggestions for improvements to the totally inadequate standards promulgated for voucher schools last July.

The accountability standards touted by Supt. White do not impose letter grades on voucher schools, do not require them to hold a common curriculum, do not require their teachers to have even the most basic certification, and do not adequately oversee their stewardship of public funds.

Even those vague standards can be waived by Supt. White – and there are no guidelines governing his ability to waiver.

Supt. White did not even bother to attend the hearing. BESE’s executive director limited most of those who appeared to a two minute presentation. Supt. White’s allies at the hearing cavalierly dismissed concerns about the accountability of voucher schools.

LFT President Steve Monaghan said the hearing “sent a very clear signal: the mission of the department of education is to champion vouchers and privatization by any means necessary, and any rules that get in the way of that agenda will not be tolerated.”

Absolute common standards for all pre-K programs that take state dollars. Not so much for the private and religious schools that Supt. White and Gov. Bobby Jindal seem to have come to favor over public education. That is hypocrisy in the highest places.

Flawed system shouldn’t dictate teacher salaries

Dependant on Value Added Model, even 1% is too much, LFT says

(Baton Rouge – October 8, 2010) With a growing number of reports illustrating the chaos fomented by a new teacher evaluation system, Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan asks school boards to limit the damage by minimizing the effect that the system has on teacher compensation.


Under Act 1 of 2012, school boards must design new teacher salary schedules by January 1, and have them in place by the 2013-14 school year. The law requires teacher effectiveness as measured by these evaluations to determine up to 50% of teacher compensation. The Louisiana Federation of Teachers has challenged the constitutionality of the new law.

“This is insane,” said Monaghan. “A broken system, a flawed model, will be used to determine the intrinsic value of teachers and their economic worth.

“We urge school boards to protect their teachers from unnecessary damage by minimizing the effect that the flawed system will have on teacher compensation,” Monaghan said. “We understand that the law requires a percentage; we’re saying make it one percent or less, until this is fixed.”

Recently, a major newspaper called Governor Jindal’s evaluation scheme unfair and concluded that it “borders on immoral.” Just last week, one of the governor’s chief allies and a strong supporter of Act 1 called the evaluation scheme “ridiculous.”

“We are learning that many of the state’s finest teachers will be labeled ‘ineffective’ because of a flawed rating system which squeezes teachers into predetermined results or outcomes,” Monaghan said.

“Evidence from around Louisiana demonstrates that the new evaluation program does not accurately reflect teacher effectiveness,” Monaghan said. “It is an inappropriate instrument on which to base any significant portion of a teacher’s salary.”

To read more of this article, please click here.

Ideology and profit trump good policy in White’s press release

(Baton Rouge – August 24, 2010) In touting the product of a researcher nationally recognized for studies biased in favor of school vouchers, Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White continues down the path of rhetoric and partisan politics at the expense of taxpayers and school children, Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan said today.

“It is obvious that Superintendent White and Governor Jindal have made a conscious effort to elevate ideology over good education policy,” Monaghan said. “The infusion of large sums of money spawned this agenda, and the pursuit of large sums of money continues to fuel it."

The LFT president was responding to a press release from White’s office claiming that vouchers in New York City “significantly increase college enrollment of African-American students.”

The study by Paul Peterson, a professor of government at Harvard University and fellow at the right-wing Hoover Institution, is extremely limited in scope and ignores factors other than vouchers in reaching its conclusion, Monaghan said.

The study found that vouchers in New York City had “no overall impacts on college enrollment.” However, Peterson and his fellow researcher said they found “large, statistically significant positive impacts on the college going of African-American students who participated in the study.”

“Superintendent White makes a giant leap from that finding and concludes that Louisiana will see ‘rising student achievement and ultimately more college graduates’ because of vouchers in our state,” Monaghan said. “His logic has more holes than a screen door.”

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Supreme Court won’t enjoin Jindal’s voucher scheme

Echoing a district court ruling, the Louisiana Supreme Court today denied a request for an injunction to halt funding for Governor Bobby Jindal’s controversial school voucher plan. A trial to determine the constitutionality of the voucher scheme will proceed as scheduled on October 15, however.

The Supreme Court affirmed District Judge Tim Kelly’s decision that the judiciary cannot enjoin the voucher program because Superintendent of Education John White and Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater signed affidavits claiming that an injunction would create a deficit in the state budget.
“Even though we contend that their statements are demonstrably false – there is no way that not spending money can cause a deficit – the courts must accept the affidavits as factual and cannot challenge them in any way,” said Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan. “Judge Kelly was very clear when he told us the law does not allow him to question the truthfulness of the statements by White and Rainwater.”

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers and others have sued the state on grounds that Act 2 of 2012, which established the voucher program, violates the state constitution for at least two reasons, and did not pass the legislature by the required number of votes.

Today’s ruling has no bearing on the legitimacy of the challenge or the ultimate outcome of the case. The LFT had sought the injunction to spare the confusion that will come if the law is declared unconstitutional while students are already attending voucher schools.

To read the rest of this story, please click here.

Voucher vote "the fruit of a poisoned tree"

(Baton Rouge - June 4, 2012) Calling today’s vote by the House of Representatives to fund Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education agenda “the fruit of a poisoned tree,” Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan said the next stage for this sad saga will be in Louisiana courtrooms.

“From the first day that this sorry scheme was introduced until today’s outrageous and tainted vote, the constitution and the rule of law have been recklessly disregarded,” Monaghan said.

By an extremely narrow 51-49 margin, the House voted to concur on a proposed $3.4 billion Minimum Foundation Program budget. In prior years, the MFP constitutionally and correctly funded public elementary and secondary schools.

But this year’s formula redefines public education to include private and religious schools, virtual online schools, corporate and industry providers, and even higher education institutions.

“Had the law been respected,” Monaghan said, “SCR 99 would have never contradicted the constitution or its stated purpose. And, having done just that, it should have failed today."

Before the vote was taken, Speaker of the House Chuck Kleckley (R-Lake Charles) announced that SCR 99 would prevail if it received the votes of a majority of those present, even though the constitution stipulates that 53 votes would be necessary.

To the consternation of most in the chamber, Speaker Kleckley dismissed complaints by saying that the House has “a long history” of violating the constitution.

“That is just one more outrage added to the list of reasons why these issues will head to court,” Monaghan said.

During debate on the House floor, no member took the stand to defend the resolution except for Rep. Steve Carter (R-Baton Rouge), who chairs the House Education Committee. From the back of the room, however, Gov. Jindal’s lobbyists relentlessly twisted arms to eke out the narrow margin by which the resolution passed.

Representatives of both parties took the microphone to denounce the proposed MFP.

A defining issue in the debate was the plan to send as much as $8,500 per pupil to religious schools. Those included an Islamic school in Jefferson Parish and several religious schools around the state which have not been fully vetted, lack certified teachers and appropriate equipment, and have no track record of student achievement.

Rep. Sam Jones (D-Franklin) said that he supports religious freedom, but that giving taxpayer money to religious schools resembles a “European model” that led to generations of violent conflict over differences in beliefs.

The closeness of the final vote reflected a deep-seated unease in many members of the House, Monaghan said. In past years, opposition to the formula has been reflected in single-digit votes. For 49 members to stand against the governor’s wishes is unprecedented, he said.

LFT urges rejection of education budget



LFT President Steve Monaghan

 (Baton Rouge – May 10, 2012) The Legislature should reject a proposed $3.4 billion public education budget because it violates the state constitution and could enrich as-yet unidentified private companies at the expense of public schools across the state, Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan said today.

If the Minimum Foundation Program formula proposed by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education goes forward, Monaghan said, it will constitute a radical redefinition of the meaning of public education. The plan would pay for a dramatic expansion of charter schools in the state, and for the first time make tuition for private and religious schools an official part of the education budget.
“This is the worst Minimum Foundation Program ever submitted,” Monaghan told the Senate Education Committee.

In spite of Monaghan’s objection, the committee voted four-to-one to report SCR 99 by Sen. Conrad Appel (R-Metairie) favorably to the full Senate.

To read the rest of the story, please click here.

A message from LFT President Steve Monaghan: Elections have consequences

“Elections have consequences.”

Type that sentence into your search engine, and you’re likely to get more than 32 million hits.

What has happened to public education in the past few weeks has taught me (and I am quite sure many others) new respect for the “consequences” statement. Never have we seen an election that has had such dire consequences.

Attacks on the professionals who dedicate their lives to our children have never been so vicious. The destruction of our public schools has never been so imminent.

In January, Gov. Jindal launched his “bold education reform” in a speech to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry. In it, he compared teachers to drug dealers and batterers.

This month, the legislature passed one law that will dismantle our schools and divert billions of public dollars to private, religious and corporate schools, and another law that bases virtually all personnel decisions on the controversial new ‘Value Added Model” of teacher evaluation. The proverbial train is on the tracks.

Education was first in the crosshairs, but we’re not the only target. Governor Jindal and his allies are ruthlessly pursuing the most radical deconstruction of public services ever seen in Louisiana. State employees, public safety and health care will be next on the chopping block.

To read more, please click here.

LFT president responds to Jindal's intimidation

(Baton Rouge – March 21, 2012) Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan responded with outrage to the Jindal administration’s efforts to intimidate lawmakers and teachers opposed to his radical education “reform” scheme.

“The heavy hand of politics is always involved in the legislative process, but never so obviously and so ominously,” Monaghan said.

The LFT president was responding to an announcement that a law firm affiliated with the Republican Party has requested copies of all e-mail correspondence between State Rep. John Bel Edwards and Monaghan or any other member of the LFT staff.

Read the rest of this story - click here.

Watch Rep. John Bel Edwards respond to intimidation from Jindal's allies:

Monaghan letter: MFP violates Constitution

In a letter to newspaper editors around the state, LFT President Steve Monaghan explained how the Minimum Foundation Program formula adopted by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education last week was railroaded through without adequate public comment.

As Monaghan put it, "Debate was stifled in a manner reminiscent of the very worst political shenanigans of the past. Ironically, it was the very administration that touts itself as the most ethical in history that apparently orchestrated this exercise in faux democracy."

Read the whole letter, as printed by The Advocate in Baton Rouge, here.

See Steve Monaghan on LPB's "The State We're In"

Louisiana Public Broadcasting Reporter Sue Lincoln has interviewed LFT President Steve Monaghan for two episodes of her program, “Louisiana – The State We’re In.”
Part one, “Jindal Tackles Teacher Tenure,” will air tonight at 7:00 P.M. on Louisiana Public Broadcasting stations.

If you don’t have access to an LPB station, the show will be available online at the www.lpb.org Web site by Saturday morning, under the “News” category.

The second episode, which will cover charter schools and vouchers, will air next Friday at 7:00 P.M., and will appear online the next morning.

Listen to LFT President Steve Monaghan and new State Supt. John White

Radio host Jim Engster had both Steve Monaghan and new State Superintendent of Education John White on his show yesterday. You can listen to a podcast of the show by visiting this Web site:
http://wrkf.org/multimedia/index.php?id=1
and clicking on “The Jim Engster Show 01-19-12, Jerry Stovall, John White, Steve Monaghan

Jindal's plan: Controversial, unjust and insulting

Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan has strong words for Governor Bobby Jindal's newly released education agenda.

In a special edition of Your LFT Connection, Monaghan writes:

On January 17, the governor unveiled his plan in a speech to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry. Unfortunately, the governor chose his words very poorly as he framed his controversial agenda.

We had hoped that the governor would identify areas where consensus among stakeholders could emerge in the best interests of children and all citizens. There are more than 30 policy initiatives outlined in the governor’s press material, a barrage of ideas that will have to be carefully sorted when lawmakers come into session on March 12.

To find out more about the LFT's reaction to Gov. Jindal's education agenda, please click here.

Tone of Jindal’s speech uneven, in part offensive, teachers say

(Baton Rouge – January 17, 2012) In a lengthy speech before members of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, Governor Bobby Jindal unveiled what he has characterized as his bold plan for public education. The governor outlined a broad agenda divided into categories including teachers, parents, school officials and early childhood education.
As expected, the long list of ideas included a significant number of controversial initiatives.

However, it was the governor’s word choice that proved most surprising and that many educators may find offensive.

“It is unfortunate that the governor chose to frame his agenda in a way that demeans teachers,” Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan said after reading the governors’ prepared comments.

“On one hand the governor acknowledged teachers as the backbone of education and urged that teachers be celebrated and appreciated. However, just moments later he inaccurately and unfairly asserted to this audience of influential business leaders that teachers “are given lifetime job protection…and short of selling drugs in the workplace or beating up” their students, teachers couldn’t be fired.

To read the rest of this story, please click here.

Advocate, LFT agree on "Haynesville Bust"

In a recent editorial, The Advocate in Baton Rouge pointed out that the state is losing hundreds of millions of dollars because a loophole in our tax law gives petroleum producers a tax break on the boom in natural gas drilling.

The newspaper called it"the great Haynesville bust" because most of the action is in North Louisiana's Haynesville play, where landowners have become millionaires and oil companies are reaping vast profits.

Left our of the bonanza is the State of Louisiana: "In the 1990s," said the editorial, "when horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing were new methods, the state passed at the behest of the powerful oil industry a 100 percent tax exemption for the cost of drilling wells."

In this letter to the editor, LFT President Steve Monaghan wrote of the practical impact of the loophole. "While education, health care, the transportation infrastructure and other vital public services starve," Monaghan wrote, "vast fortunes are being made by the energy corporations."

It was not unexpected, said Monaghan:

Nearly two years ago, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the
Louisiana Budget Project were partners in creating the Better Choices for a
Better Louisiana coalition. The coalition’s main goal was a balanced approach to
our budget crisis and to ensure that Louisiana had the resources required to
provide the services our people need and deserve.
Early on, Better Choices was critical of the state tax loophole granted for horizontal drilling. As new discoveries in the Tuscaloosa Trend come into play, Louisiana stands to lose even more millions.

The LFT President ended his letter by urging Gov. Jindal and the legislature "to examine and reconsider the tax breaks for horizontal drilling and each of the more than 400 tax breaks on the books."