BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A judge Tuesday threw out part of an education revamp pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal as unconstitutional, but upheld the centerpiece provisions that changed teacher tenure and salary laws.
Judge Michael Caldwell ruled that the section of the legislation dealing with the authority of local school boards and school superintendents violated the state constitution because it didn't fit into the stated objective of the bill.
He said any attempt to connect the authority of school boards with the listed objective of teacher tenure, pay-for-performance and evaluations "requires a long, tenuous and convoluted journey which this court is not willing to make."
The Baton Rouge judge's ruling hands a mixed victory to the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, the union that filed the lawsuit challenging the bill, known as Act 1.
The decision gets rid of changes that lessened the power of local school boards over hiring and firing and that required the state superintendent's review of local school superintendent contracts. It also reinstates a previous law that allows seniority-based protections for teachers when layoffs occur.
But the ruling maintains as constitutional other sections of the bill that the union strongly opposed, including the provisions eliminating statewide teacher pay scales and making it tougher for teachers to reach the job protection status of tenure.
"This ruling upholds the core purpose of the law — rewarding effective teachers and supporting ineffective teachers who want to improve," Jindal said in a statement.
LFT President Steve Monaghan said the organization will appeal Caldwell's decision, even as he said the judge's ruling upheld the union's point that the bill bundled too many objectives and the changes should have been spread out among multiple measures.
"We believe that the judge here gave his best ruling, but we do believe that it should be reviewed by the appellate court," Monaghan said.
Union lawyer Larry Samuel said the bill violated a constitutional provision requiring legislation to have one object, which is designed to give lawmakers the ability to properly comb through proposals and weigh their impact. Samuel said Jindal loaded up one bill to railroad it through the Legislature.
Attorney Jimmy Faircloth, representing the Jindal administration and the state, said all parts of the bill related to teacher employment and could be included together under the constitution.
Faircloth said he'd talk to Superintendent of Education John White about whether to appeal the judge's decision to toss out the school board section of the bill.
"The more substantive parts of the act were upheld," Faircloth said.
Faircloth noted that local school districts have negotiated new contracts and policies based on the part of Act 1 that was ruled unconstitutional, and he said those arrangements were still valid.
"School boards statewide have made bold changes to their layoff and compensation policies that will keep good teachers in the classroom. We await the specifics of the ruling, and we encourage all districts to maintain the reforms they have put in place," White said in a statement.
But Scott Richard, head of the Louisiana School Boards Association, said the judge's decision could have some school boards revisiting those newly adopted regulations.
Tuesday's ruling was the second time in a month that some of Jindal's education initiatives have run into trouble with a judge.
Financing for the governor's statewide voucher program has been deemed unconstitutional by another district court judge, a ruling that is being appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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