'School choice' activists wary of Louisiana's new governor

John Bel Edwards' alliances with teachers unions and conventional public school leaders are drawing concern that Louisiana's next governor will seek to revisit legislative battles over charter schools and private school tuition vouchers. In a sign of the strength of Edwards' ties to the unions, the Democrat's first speech since winning Saturday's runoff election was Monday (Nov. 23) at the Louisiana Federation of Teachers convention in Lake Charles.

"I know the power and the promise of a public school education when it's done right and when you've got a good partner in the governor's office. Well, let me tell you something, come Jan. 11 you're going to have a good partner in the governor's office," Edwards told the group, according to a video of the speech provided by his spokeswoman.

His wife a public school teacher, Edwards is a long-time critic of the voucher program that provides taxpayer-financed tuition to private schools. As a state lawmaker, he has unsuccessfully sought to place more restrictions on the expansion of charter schools, which are run with broad autonomy from state and local education officials.

During his campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter, however, Edwards said he wouldn't seek to shutter Louisiana's voucher program or its widespread use of charter schools to educate students. But he said the voucher program should be for only students in failing public schools. He also wants to prohibit the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from starting new charter schools in higher-performing public school systems that have denied the charter application.

http://theadvocate.com/news/14067316-32/governor-elect-john-bel-edwards-promises

Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards clears air with teachers, says he’s not banning vouchers or closing charter schools

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/14023549-148/huge-gulf-looms-on-public

BESE, John Bel Edwards likely to disagree on major issues: vouchers, charter schools, Common Core

The public schools in New Orleans were war zones before Jindal took office, serving no purpose except patronage jobs for utterly incompetent teachers and administrators, as well as outright graft and theft.
Employees of the district’s payroll office were discovered cutting regular weekly pay checks for their friends and relatives who were not actually employees, as well as former employees who had long since retired and had begun receiving pensions. Some janitors were getting paid bogus overtime, to the tune of $70k per year.
This went on for years, without any kind of accounting, and was apparently discovered accidentally by a news reporter.
Katrina first responders, intending to set up a staging area for rescue operations, opened one high school building with an undamaged exterior.
Inside, they found appalling conditions—desks in disarray, broken trophy cases, graffiti, clogged toilets. This was a school that had had students a few days previously, but there was no order, no evidence any learning took place there.
Any attempt to improve learning in classrooms was shot down by the joke of a school board with accusations of racism.
It was so bad that the students at one all-black school actually walked out—complaining they weren’t getting an education!

After Katrina, wise souls seized the opportunity to essentially stage a coup of the school board. The parents had to fight tooth and nail, but they succeeded in establishing citywide charter schools.
Jindal was elected and instituted school vouchers. Students were bailing out of the public schools in droves and flocking to the charters in New Orleans, and test scores were shooting up.
The Obama administration sued, claiming it was “unconstitutional” to take money from the public school budget for the charter, private, and parochial schools. IOW, put the money back where the corruptocrats can steal it.
Jindal fought back to defend school choice, while in the interim (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) allocating separate state funds to continue the voucher program.
Jindal, IOW, consistently fought for motivated students to get a better chance, to help them get out of these vile hellholes that passed for schools.
The democrats have consistently fought to keep the kids in the ghetto.

Edwards is already signaling he sides with the racist, corrupt unions and against the schoolchildren.
I don’t live in LA anymore and my kids are grown, but I continue to follow the news from there. I’m praying for y’all.

Ah, for the return of person responsibility when parents ensured the education of their OWN brood, by PAYING for the service(s) themselves. Those poor, realizing the check is NOT in the mail, actually ASKED for assistance/getting off their asses/NOT having (more) kids.

Just THINK of all the problems that would disappear if we were still a Republic and the Constitution were followed: no more conflicts of interest w/ public sector unions, no violations of the 4th/5th Amendments...

SIGH *now, back to reality*

Look at the downticket races last Saturday.

Good GOP wins across the board, with major ticket splitting. Vitter went down because of his personal issues and because he’d managed to tick off just about every other GOP officeholder and leader in the state.

Edwards is an accidental governor. If he wants any chance of either winning a second term or rebuilding the LA Dem Party from it’s ruins he’ll just nibble around the edges of controversial ideologically-driven issues like this to keep his nutcase fringe base appeased, but otherwise steer clear and focus on effective management.

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