Even using his numbers, more than half of our schools did not meet state-mandated growth targets. Bellicose bombast in the face of such a fact is tantamount to a football team spiking the ball and doing an end zone dance when they're still on their own 40 yard line.
He states in his piece of July 19, "Lafayette can attain and sustain this goal [DPS of 120 by 2014] â?¦ with annual growth of 3.1," which we have never achieved.
He talks about how many stars schools have, but a school can be labeled "in decline" regardless of how many stars it has. The report prepared by his staff indicated that four of our six high schools ' 60 percent ' are now labeled "in decline."
He states he "does not mind being held accountable for the hard work of our boys and girls, their parents and teachers." This is confusing. Shouldn't any superintendent be "held accountable for the hard work" that he or she does, not for the "hard work" of others?
I have other concerns like how things are being done without board approval, how discipline is out of control, how the disgraceful condition of our campuses is not being addressed, how some funds are being handled, and how difficult it is to get information because of the pall of paranoia which has descended. Intelligent decisions cannot be made without accurate and complete information, and for a public entity, providing information is not a service; it's the law.
I am accused of being "negative," but the numbers speak for themselves (22nd in the state overall, 30th in minority education, 35th in "free/reduced"). People deserve the truth, and I will not be bullied into silence by didactic diatribes, hyperbolic hypocrisy, or supercilious sophistry. The only thing about which I am positive is that our current situation is unacceptable.
You can't solve a problem until you admit that you have one. Far too many children are not getting the education they deserve and need. This is not an indictment of "boys and girls, their parents and teachers," but of the current leadership. The only cause for optimism is that new leadership will be in place in January.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
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