Lafayette’s Holly Boffy, Louisiana’s 2010 Teacher of the Year, crushed longtime Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Dale Bayard of Lake Charles, sweeping the nine parishes in District 7 — and winning every single precinct in Lafayette Parish.
Boffy received 81,544 votes or 66 percent of the votes cast in the district, denying Bayard a fourth consecutive term.
The district includes most of Lafayette Parish and all of Acadia, Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jeff Davis, Vermilion and Vernon parishes.
Boffy is an education reform candidate backed by Gov. Bobby Jindal. The governor has been actively working to secure BESE’s support for his education reform measures, which he believes requires a reconstitution of the board before it selects a new superintendent of education.
Boffy, director of professional development for the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana, also got the backing of Baton Rouge businessman Lane Grigsby’s Alliance for Better Classrooms. ABC favors rewarding schools that grow academically, holding local school boards more accountable for the academic achievement of the students in their districts and believes school districts should be able to dismiss teachers who are persistently ineffective. The alliance favors school choice, supporting tax credits, tax deductions, home schooling, virtual school and “any approach that results in a quality public education for Louisiana student(s).”
Jindal and ABC lost one supporter Saturday as incumbent Glenny Lee Buquet of Houma was defeated by Lottie Polozola Beebe of Breaux Bridge.
Incumbent Jim Garvey of Metairie was re-elected, and incumbent Keith Guice of Monroe was defeated by Jay Guillot of Ruston. Jindal backed Garvey and Guillot, and another education reform supporter, Chas Roemer of Baton Rouge, is in a runoff with Donald Songy of Prairieville.
In all, those supportive of the governor's agenda won three seats in the primary and lead in two races going to runoffs. If Roemer and Kira Orange Jones of New Orleans win their respective races, the governor will have eight of 11 seats on BESE (he appoints 3).
Read more about how Saturday’s election and the general election will affect the makeup of BESE in The Advocate.
The Lake Charles American Press quoted Bayard saying prior to the election results he “felt like Davy Crockett at the Alamo with Sam Houston at the front door.”
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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