Blueprint Louisiana, a nonpartisan effort of business and community leaders founded in 2006 to improve economic opportunities in the state, last week released a new list of five recommendations for reform it plans to support during the election cycle and next legislative session:
Prioritize Student Success Over Traditional Practices That Impede Performance in Public Schools. Our adherence to long-standing models and systems, for tradition’s sake, is not delivering the outcomes our students deserve or that our society requires in the 21st century. It is past time to replicate what we know works in public education—high-quality teachers and principals empowered to make performance-based decisions—and implement proven strategies in public schools in our state.
Create A Single High-Quality Pre-Kindergarten System. Louisiana should prioritize funding for pre-kindergarten and simplify access through a coordinated statewide program of high quality with accountability for outcomes.
Re-EngineerPublic Retirement and Health Care Benefits for Long-Term Stability. Louisiana must act now to stem the growth in retirement and health care debt for public employees—both state workers and teachers. The state cannot afford to put off structural and systemic changes that ensure we live up to our commitments now and make more affordable policies for the future.
Transition Louisiana’s Charity Hospitals to Public-Private Partnerships. The New Orleans network of primary care clinics and the upcoming Baton Rouge partnership between Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center and Earl K. Long Hospital are best-practice models that should be applauded and replicated. The state should build on this progress and take the lead to encourage other regional partnerships, allowing Louisiana State University to focus on medical education and research.
Adopt “Smart on Crime” Reforms that Reduce the Highest Incarceration Rate in the Nation. Experts attribute “policy choices” as the primary determinant for incarceration rates, not crime itself. Louisiana must re-evaluate business as usual in our prison system and act on the recommendations of the Sentencing Commission to lower costs and improve outcomes.
“Years of experience and poor outcomes demonstrate that business as usual fails to serve our citizens well,” said Blueprint Louisiana Chairman Jimmy Maurin, chairman of Stirling Properties in Covington. “The election season is a time to remind state leaders the people of Louisiana want and deserve better. Bold leadership must be willing to take on tough issues and move us forward.”Blueprint says the list of reform items included topics it has been active in previously — elementary and secondary education, early childhood education, public sector benefits, health care and the justice system. The organization performed extensive research over the summer to develop the specific reform recommendations for each topic.
“In recognition of the state’s ongoing fiscal challenges, the new Blueprint Agenda involves no cost to the state,” Maurin said. “While these recommendations do not require additional funds, they do require political will. We look forward to working with all of the experienced and new legislators when they arrive in Baton Rouge early next year.”
Blueprint is presenting the list of recommendations to candidates for the Legislature and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and asking for their support. Blueprint will list on its website the candidates who express support for the agenda.
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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