Wednesday, June 15, 2011
A middle school special-ed teacher from Haynesville has her eye on the most unlikely prize — the governor’s mansion. By Walter Pierce
Tara Hollis is running for governor. Of Louisiana.
My reaction when a campaign announcement from the north Louisiana public school teacher appeared in my inbox in late May was, “Well, she’s crazy.” I even blogged Hollis’ fledgling and, it seemed then almost as much as it seems now, impossible undertaking beneath the headline, “This week in quixotic: North La. teacher running for gov.”
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A state Senate committee erred in choosing to let stand the Louisiana Science Education Act. By Walter Pierce
It was a dogged by phonies show in the Hainkel Room at the state Capitol last week as the Senate Education Committee heard testimony for and against repealing the misnamed and ill-begotten Louisiana Science Education Act. Led by newly minted high school graduate Zach Kopplin — I’d buy that kid a beer were he a few years older — and the sponsor of Senate Bill 70, Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, proponents of the repeal laid out a solid case that the act signed into law by our biology major governor in 2008 following nearly unanimous support in both chambers of the Legislature is little more than a Trojan Horse for creationists to sneak their sneaky asses into high school biology classes under the guise of Intelligent Design and “critical thinking.”
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The only thing Louisiana’s next schools superintendent needs to build is momentum for reform. By Walter Pierce
Paul Pastorek looked like a broken man in the photograph on last Wednesday’s Advocate front page. Taken at the press conference in which he announced his sudden and unexpected resignation — rumors of his departure began circulating just hours before the presser, to the shock of supporters and, no doubt, the unmitigated relief of the public-education establishment — the 57-year-old lawyer was clearly spent, tears welling in his eyes. After four years battling the often intransigent, turf-sensitive public-education system in Louisiana, Paul Pastorek was beaten — a wobbly-kneed boxer resigned to the TKO.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
A Lafayette civic group makes a strong case for holding off on new taxes for our public schools. Will the board listen?
The name may be polarizing, but 100 Black Men of Greater Lafayette’s recent request of the Lafayette Parish School Board is something we can rally around.
Last week, 100 BMGL urged the board to defer asking Lafayette Parish voters to approve a new property tax until a long-term superintendent is in place and both an education plan and transparency are adopted by the board.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
How do we measure the impact of the BP spill, which began one year ago today, April 20, with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig — a blast that killed 11 men and opened the spigot on the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history?
How much oil is still out there? And what about the toxic dispersants? What, if any, are the long-term health and environmental effects of the BP spill?
One yardstick is the full-page, full-color ads BP is still buying in newspapers. This has been a boon for the dailies. We see them on a routine basis in The Advertiser. I suspect The Times-Picayune has been the biggest beneficiary based on its circulation and proximity to the disaster.
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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