The Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce’s recently formed political action committee, Empower PAC, is interviewing candidates for the Lafayette Parish School Board on Friday and Monday and will issue endorsements soon after. The PAC can also give each candidate it endorses up to a $1,000 campaign contribution.
Candidates, including incumbents, in districts 2, 4 and 5 are being interviewed by the PAC’s board and membership on Friday; candidates in districts 6,7 and 8 are scheduled for Monday. The incumbents in districts 1, 3 and 9 — Mark Babineaux, Shelton Cobb and Rae Trahan, respectively — are unopposed.
GLCC President and CEO Rob Guidry says all the candidates including the three unopposed board members were sent a questionnaire recently soliciting their responses to education issues. Babineaux, Cobb and Trahan did not return the questionnaire and it’s unclear whether they will participate in the Empower PAC interviews.
Guidry says the PAC is seeking candidates who support the chamber’s education agenda, which reflects in some respects state Superintendent Paul Pastorek’s reform agenda — an agenda that has drawn intense opposition from the Louisiana School Boards Association as well as some teachers’ associations.
“The issues that are most paramount are, we want to know, if elected, what are the views of the candidates on the role of a school board member relative to the superintendent,” Guidry explains. “We want to be sure they are of the philosophy that the school board is a policy-making body and the district superintendent should be involved in the hiring and firing of personnel. We also believe a school board member should possess a high school degree or the equivalent. We are concerned about how they would approach the achievement gap. And we’re interested in them speaking to the fact that they will be governing a school system that has a product, and that product is going to be used by the business community as a workforce.”
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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????? What???? Don't they all have bachelor's or master's degrees? Is there a board member elected that doesn't have a high school diploma? that would be a surprise.