Louisiana was in the fast lane of the
national super highway called “Education Reform” long before
other states discovered their public education systems needed to be
modernized. Granted, we were further behind when we started, but,
Louisiana was modernizing long before President George W. Bush passed
the “No Child Left Behind Act” with strong bi-partisan support in
Congress.
But, in the past few years, our
progress has been stalled. One major reason for this stall: the
Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and Governor
Bobby Jindal refuse to give the fair share of school tax dollars to
local school districts.
By refusing to send the legally
required fair share of Minimum Foundation Program school funds to
each district, Bobby and BESE are in direct violation of our state
constitution.
Our state constitution requires the
Louisiana Board of Education to provide resources and funding to
every district in the state, using what is called the Minimum
Foundation Program to make sure that every classroom teacher can do
their job right.
Specifically, Article VIII, Section 13
explains the Minimum Foundation Program funding requirements. You
can look it up online and read for yourself.
The most conservative estimates suggest
that in 2012-13 alone, Bobby and BESE cheated our schools of $323 PER
STUDENT! In that one school year, $200 million was skimmed from
funds owed to public schools.
Since 2009, we've had major teacher
lay-offs every year when Bobby and BESE starved us of our funds.
I can assure you, every teacher lay-off
in our schools is directly correlated with a decline in our school
performance scores. But, these days, Bobby and BESE would have you
believe that certified teachers don't matter. According to their
theories, our kids can learn just as easily by surfing on the
internet, supervised by high school graduates without college
degrees.
That idea is working so badly that the
NCAA listed several of Louisiana's online schools as ineligible for
placement in college athletics. Bobby Jindal's highly touted K-12,
Inc. is high on the list of ineligible online schools, but that's a
story for another day.
Research has shown time and again that
staffing our classrooms with certified teachers is a very strong
predictor of student success.
But, just when school performance
scoring rules got tougher, Bobby and BESE skimmed our Minimum
Foundation Program funds. Our class sizes ballooned making it
difficult to give our poorly performing students the support they
need. Our school scores went down.
At $323 per kid, Bobby and BESE owe ¾
of a million dollars to Eunice schools for just ONE YEAR.
We could have 15 more licensed teachers
in Eunice public school classrooms to coach our kids in math,
reading, science, and social studies if Bobby and BESE did their
constitutional jobs.
They took our children's classroom
money and spent it elsewhere.
Where did the money go? To fund
profit-making Charter School Management Companies, vouchers to
private schools that have been rated as below standard, to set up
“on-line” schools that take exorbitant fees from the state with
failure rates that would put our neighborhood schools out of
business.
Why are we not fussing to high heavens
about this?
Probably, because most of us did not
know that the Louisiana Board of Education and Governor Bobby Jindal
were siphoning off our school district Minimum Foundation Program
funds to pay for programs that are NOT constitutionally valid.
Bobby and BESE's spending choices ARE
NOT constitutionally valid. Our state courts are saying so every
time another lawsuit challenging the legality of Bobby and BESE's
financial shenanigans hit their court dockets.
Our school boards did not know how to
fight these constitutional violations at first. But finally, school
districts across the state filed a lawsuit to get our fair share of
our tax dollars returned to our schools.
Local school boards are finally leaning
on Louisiana's Constitution to force Bobby and BESE to get their act
together to properly fund our schools.
We will win this fight. We need your
help, though. We need you to contact your BESE board member and
Governor Bobby Jindal. We need you to tell these politicians that
they owe us at least $323 more per student per year if they want to
claim they are true Louisiana patriots.
Whenever you hear Bobby claim his
adherence to constitutional principles, it is very important for all
of us to respond with one voice: Where's our Minimum Foundation
Program funds, Bobby?
You believe in upholding our Louisiana
Constitution? Show us the money!
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