Hazing Does Not Build Great Teams -- Published in Sunday Eunice News on August 17, 2014

You may have seen the Ohio State University Band animate half- time with their amazing Michael Jackson moonwalk. It is hard to imagine that this extraordinary band is under investigation for serious hazing activities, but, they are.

This time of year, bands, spirit clubs and sports teams are practicing hard and doing all kinds of activities to build team spirit. In college, freshmen are shopping around for clubs and fraternities for social support. All organizations have initiation rites to welcome new members and help them feel like they fully belong. These rites should be public, safe, and designed to build positive social relationships.

Too many organizations still confuse welcoming initiation rites with hazing, which is why we are still reading about il- legal hazing practices in high schools and colleges across the U.S.A.

What’s the difference? If an initiation rite is safe, no one will be harmed physically, emotionally, or socially. The persons inducted to a group will feel that they belong, that they have a positive role in the group, and that their time spent with the group can blossom into lifetime friendships.

Hazing causes physical or psychological harm. In Louisiana, hazing is illegal, thank goodness. Those who haze or permit hazing can be fined and/or imprisoned for 10-30 days if convicted. Students who haze can be expelled from school.

Sadly, our most popular leaders and students can be caught up in hazing incidents. Students who want desperately to belong will go along with hazing if they think they will be accepted by their peers.

Teachers, coaches, band directors have tolerated the practice, or actively encouraged hazing in the misguided belief that hazing is a form of discipline or character-building. But, hazing does not build strong character. Hazing creates an abusive atmosphere of meanness and intimidation.

Some of us are old enough to remember relatives who served in the military during its worse days – the Vietnam era, when soldiers were physically abused and psychologically demeaned. After that war, there was a severe leadership crisis. But, the Army worked hard to change its culture for the better.

I was lucky to attend Officer Candidate School at “Fort Benning’s School for Boys” in the early 1980's – when the military worked hard to create a positive training culture – welcoming of diversity, welcoming of men and women who brought all kinds of skills and talent to their lives as soldiers.

Of course, soldiers were rated for their character traits, then, as now. We studied all kinds of reflections from leaders who kept their soldiers together in battle. I learned my best leadership lessons there. The first was how to correct behavior in my subordinates. We were required not only to memorize, but to live up to Schofield’s Definition of Discipline:

The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. It is possible to impart instructions and to give commands in such a manner and in such a tone of voice as to inspire in the soldier no feeling but and intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey. The one mode or other of dealing with subordinates springs from a corresponding spirit in the breast of the commander. He who feels the respect which is due others cannot fail to inspire in them regard for himself; while he who feels, and hence manifests, disrespect toward other, especially his inferiors, cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself.

There’s no question in my mind that those teachers and coaches who have tolerated hazing in the past had very good, but very misguided intentions. They wanted to build discipline in their organization. But in fact, if discipline happened, it was in spite of the hazing.

As a parent, let your child know that under no circumstances should they participate in or be victim to any kind of hazing. Hazing is not welcoming. It is not good discipline. Hazing is a crime, not worthy of any sport or extracurricular activity in your child’s life. No matter how much prestige that group has in the moment, at some point, their hazing culture will be exposed.

Hopefully, before serious damage is done.

Begin Anew with Self-Confidence! - Sunday Eunice News Commentary published August 10, 2014

The new school year is upon us! We've stuffed our backpacks and classrooms with supplies and gadgets. We bought new clothes, new shoes, new accessories to mark our new beginning.  We are gradually adjusting our bed and wake-up times to conform to the demands of our school bus schedules. We've stopped by the office to pick up our schedules, pay fees, drop money in the school lunch account.

What's left?  Attitude adjustment.  Did we spend enough time this summer reflecting on our school experiences to get rid of our tired negative attitudes that may have crept up on us sometime between prom night and the last day of school?

Believe it or not, student, parent, teacher and community attitudes towards learning are highly predictive of student success.

When children have high “self-efficacy” beliefs, that is, the belief that they can accomplish academic tasks, they tend to perform much better in school.  They have a clear view of what their strengths and weaknesses are, and they know what they have to do each day to improve their skills and knowledge.

Children who have confidence in their self-efficacy can persist and work hard to solve school problems.   They have academic “resilience,” the ability to hang in there when the going gets tough.

There have been many studies that show that parents and teachers need to have  high self-efficacy ratings, too, for themselves and for their children if their children are to believe that they are strong learners.

When parents or teachers start with the premise “this child can't learn this,” the child is less likely to learn what is considered within their grasp by education experts.   Hence, it is important to foster positive “self-efficacy” beliefs in ourselves as well as our children and our students.

How do we do this?  For one, it is very important that materials taught are age and developmentally appropriate.  There's no sense in thrusting a third grader into a college level romantic literature class and telling them, “they can do it,” because the material is too advanced for their stage of life. They would not fail, but, they would believe they failed.  Teaching materials that are timely to a child's development is key to instilling self-efficacy in each child.

Students must also be taught how to figure out their own mistakes, how to build knowledge by looking for strategies and solutions if they discover they were off-base.  To do this, we must teach them to be confident in their study habits, persistent in their goal of understanding, and joyful that they have this God-given ability to learn new things every day.

Why bring this up at the start of the year?  I recently attended a celebration at my elementary school. A group of us talked about old times (40-50 years ago) as if we were still living in that era, when nuns slapped the wrists of naughty students, and publicly berated students for missing answers in ways that were so cruel, my classmates still felt the sting when we gathered on that reunion

Many of my peers had parents and teachers who told them over and over “you are not college material.”   They did not go to college.  My own parents were oddly different, expecting us to do our school work, and to prove our smarts by reading big books and writing from our imagination.  “You can do anything you put your mind to,” was their mantra whenever we were discouraged about our homework or our standing at school.

When kids come to school today,  they need to know that they ARE capable of learning, and that they will gain much by believing in their own hard work in the classroom and at the homework table.  They need to know that making mistakes is a huge part of learning.  Children should be encouraged to make many mistakes, and taught how to fix their own mistakes.

No question, the start of the school year is the best time for us to renew our partnership as parents, teachers, and the community responsible for educating all our children.  As we do so, let's promise each other to teach our children self-efficacy, and help them, thereby, to develop a deep and lasting love of learning.

Author's note: Last week I said Louisiana pays schools based on a single head count day.  In fact, the state bases it's payment on three head-count days, but the principle and the outcomes are the same: lower attendance rates and lower school performance scores.

Copyright August 6, 2014

Time to Change School Head Count: My Aug 3, 2014 Commentary in Sunday Eunice News

     Average daily attendance in Louisiana public schools is lower than it should be. This is not a good thing. Poor school attendance hurts not only the child who misses too much instruction -- it hurts the whole school.

     How?  When children don’t come to school, teachers must go back and re-teach significant chunks of material – making it hard for those who do come to school every day to learn as much as they should.

True, children who miss too many days receive makeup instruction. It is also true that “recovery instruction time” costs our school extra money. Recovery instruction time rarely brings a child with chronic absenteeism up to “grade level expectations.”

     There’s no substitute for showing up and participating in class when it comes to being successful on tests. But, showing up is also a basic work skill that must be learned and practiced if our youth are to be properly prepared for the adult world of work.

     Louisiana state laws seem harsh when it comes to punishing parents who allow their children to stay home too often without valid excuses. Some school districts in Louisiana use the courts as a remedy, because it is the only tool available at this time to pressure parents to send their children to school once absenteeism has gotten out of hand. Parents can be fined or jailed for allowing their children to be chronically absent without valid excuses.

     But, we need alternative strategies to solve the problem of chronic school absenteeism -- strategies that directly focus on interventions that will promote daily student attendance and prevent court actions later on.

     Teachers should not be blamed when children fail to come to school, so, it seems fair that the failing grades of chronically absent students are not counted against them in their teacher evaluations.

     But, when chronic absentee test scores are not counted in teacher evaluations, the problem of chronic absenteeism is temporarily avoided, not solved. A school’s performance score will be lower when there is chronic absenteeism because the students who don’t come to school naturally score lower on state tests. Until we fix our state evaluation system, all of our students –those who come to school and those who don’t are included in our school performance score.  Our school reputation is hurt by those who don’t come to school.

     How do we solve this problem of excessive student absenteeism?  For one thing, we need to identify this root cause of truancy in Louisiana that is often ignored.

     Presently, school attendance rates are lower in Louisiana because there are no immediate and direct consequences for any school or school district that tolerates high rates of truancy. Lower school performance scores happen so late in the education cycle that they are as useful as beating a dead horse.

     School districts must be incentivized to address the problem of chronic absenteeism as early as possible so that interventions focus on correcting absenteeism before it gets out of hand.

     Louisiana schools are funded annually for every student who is enrolled on a particular day in October. Whether or not a child comes to school for the remainder of the year, if that child is enrolled in the school on the designated head count day in October, the school is paid in full for the year for that child.

     The same thing happens for online public schools. K-12, INC and other “approved” online schools receive annualized payments whether or not they teach students for a full year.  We would be better off ensuring that educational services were actually delivered before sending our annual state tax dollars to any K-12 teaching institution.

     Other states tackled their chronic low attendance problems by changing school payment formulae from a single head count day once per year to what is called “Average Daily Membership,” or ADM.

     With the ADM model, school districts receive funds for the days when students actually attend classes throughout the year, rather than for just one day, annual head count day.

     It is too easy for busy administrators to defer action when a student is chronically absent in a funding system that pays the district in full using the annual headcount method. The ADM model would ensure that school administrators and school board members take the issue of chronic absenteeism seriously by managing the daily attendance of all students enrolled in their schools on a daily basis – not waiting to react until a child’s absenteeism is out of control.

     Money talks in our society. But, money should also walk -- especially when school districts, charter schools, and online K-12 alternative schools cannot demonstrate they did everything in their power to work with parents to get their children to school every day as the law requires.

Copyright July 30, 2014

Education Should Do No Harm - My Sunday Eunice News Commentary published July 27, 2014

Should Louisiana taxpayers “keep it simple,” and allow high-priced Common Core education contracts to be funded in violation of our state contracting laws?

That was the suggestion of Stephen Waguespack, LABI President, when he argued last Sunday that it was too late to remedy the badly designed Common Core Program by canceling the sole-source contracts the way our governor, Bobby Jindal, chose to do. 

Mr. Waguespack does not seem to be aware of the public testimony of teachers, parents, and administrators who are clearly making the case that Louisiana's Common Core Program was disastrously adopted, recklessly imposed, without adequate design input from teachers, subject-matter experts, or education testing experts. 

There have been dozens of hearings, media interviews, and expert testimonies in which education leaders argued that the Common Core Program is hurting our state public education system.

The legislature tried to halt the program, but, so many state legislators are financially beholding to education industry lobbyists, they dared not cross their patrons by voting down the Common Core, as their constituents asked them to.

Governor Bobby Jindal chose to halt the Common Core with a legal strategy.  He vowed to restore some modicum of democratic process to the next phase of planning for Louisiana's public schools.

But, now, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is trying to force the Common Core through – no matter what the people and the experts say.

Enter Mr. Waguespack, spokesperson for the Louisiana Business Institute: Go through with the Common Core, because we've already invested four years in it.  “It's just that simple.”

Mr. Waguespack did not address any of the critical concerns presented by dozens of nationally recognized educators.  He ignored concerns expressed by thousands of teachers and parents who are worried that the Common Core is not age appropriate for younger school children, but at the same time, not rigorous enough for high school age children.

He minimized our concerns using the label “doubts,” then proceeded to argue we should do the easy thing: spend hundreds of millions of dollars MORE on tests that were never subject to scrutiny by experts in the field of education.

I can think of several disasters that resulted from this kind of thinking, this kind of inattention to fundamental design flaws.

Do you remember the Challenger Shuttle that was torn apart minutes after takeoff, killing six astronauts and the first teacher to travel in space?  Days before takeoff, NASA engineers were still debating design flaws.  NASA management chose to go through with the launch, because it was just that simple:  they were fearful of the embarrassment guaranteed if there was another delayed take-off due to an inexpensive design flaw.

Do you remember our shock and awe as a nation, when the City of New Orleans was submerged under water – because design flaws in the New Orleans Levees resulted in devastating floods after Hurricane Katrina?  Three months BEFORE Katrina, scientists were testifying that MRGO, a dirt moving project that was supposed to make it easier for ships to navigate to the port were rarely used, and they actually created a funnel for storm waters to surge through – guaranteeing major flooding.  MRGO was nicknamed “Trojan Horse.”  Warnings to correct the design flaw were not heeded.  We know the rest of the story.

So many complex engineering plans have design flaws, but, we ignore them because “It's just that simple:”  Disasters rarely happen.

Do you remember our disbelief as a nation when the Deepwater Horizon wells ruptured?  This engineering project was rushed.  Warnings of impending danger by trained staff were ignored. In the interest of getting oil to market quicker, managers took the simple solution.  They rushed a job and ignored reports of design flaws.   Eleven workers were killed. 

The Deepwater Horizon Disaster caused one of the worst environmental crises in American History. 

There's no reason to rush the Common Core Program through, now that design flaws and contracting flaws have been made obvious to our legislators, our Governor, and our parents and community leaders.

Sometimes, it's smart to pull the plug on badly engineered structures.  It's just as smart to pull the plug on badly designed education programs.

In the short run, superintendents and directors and public leaders may be red-cheeked with embarrassment at the sudden change of course.  After all, they've been forced to publicly endorse a very badly designed program that is already doing a lot of harm to our children.

But, in the long run, we can produce lasting positive changes in our schools by adopting research-based curriculum and testing strategies that meet the real needs of our diverse students and our 21st century workforce  --- without doing harm in the process.

Public Education should do no harm.  It's just that simple.

Copyright July 22, 2014  

Harassment is Not Terrorism

My colleague, Deanna Vandiver recently wrote of her experience with protesters who disrupted Sunday services by spewing words of condemnation at the congregation.  She characterized the experience as "religious terrorism."   Another colleague, Krista Tavis, echoed the description of Operation Save America's "direct action"  of negative proselytizing in our Untiarian Universalist Sanctuary.

I respectfully disagree with how this event is characterized by my colleagues and by UUs who engage in social media to promote our faith.

Terrorism is a vast overstatement of what happened in First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans.  There is no question that the behavior of Operation Save America was outrageous, disrespectful, and a harrassing form of public speech.

But, while their behavior as described most certainly was disruptive, it clearly was NOT terroristic.   We should not inflate the meaning of fundamentalist intruders'  pesky drama to a level that only improves their odds of achieving media celebrity.

Media celebrity would be a win for these rude proselytizers.  Do we want that?

I've been at public events, such as Lansdowne pride parades, when fundamentalists tried to grab media attention by spewing hate speech to our gathered crowds.  One fanatic was so offensive that a town personage pressed charges against him.  The case was thrown out, as it should have been, because the court ruled that hate speech, however offensive,  is protected speech - hate speech is NOT terrorism. 

Similarly, I belonged to the Paulist Center Roman Catholic Church back in the day when some of our church members were hauled into court and jailed for committing acts of civil disobedience they committed to protest the Vietnam War.

Specifically, The Camden 28, with the help of an FBI informant, broke into Camden FBI offices to destroy draft records as a moral statement against Vietnam War (imitating previous actions by Jesuit priests Revs. Dan and Phil Berrigan).

In 1971, The U.S. government tried to characterize the "Camden 28"  acts of civil disobedience as conspiracy.  Our government leveled additional exaggerated charges to ensure prison terms of 47 years for each defendent - hoping, thereby, to trim the sails of peace activists who were gaining public favor.

"The Camden 28" spent eleven months in jail during the trial.  But, no one can dispute their success in using the media to turn the tide of public opinion against the War.  They successfully staged a media show trial to make their moral case against the Vietnam War,   They were eventually acquitted  once the  FBI informant who trained them to enter the FBI building surreptitiously admitted in court that he trained the group under the direction of FBI authorities who hoped that they could discredit the Peace Movement once this group was indicted for illegally entering a federal building and destroying government property (draft records).

Civil Disobedience is a time honored social justice strategy.  We could say that our very own Henry David Thoreau invented this tactic to draw attention to immoral government policies in the 19th century.  But, if you read the "Trial of Sophocles"  or "Antigone," you might agree with me that there have always been people of conscience who were willing to do outrageous, illegal things to make a moral statement of conscience in the hope of convincing authorities to change their evil ways.

As a young US Army duty officer at Oakland Army Base, I once had to monitor protections for Martin Sheen and his entourage when they protested the presence of nuclear missiles on the base.  Our official government position was that there were no missiles on the base.  I was just a lieutenant, so, I had no knowledge either way.

At the time, I thought Martin Sheen exaggerated his own importance when he protested by carrying the Cross of Christ up and down past all our base access points.  But, by 1985, the US government knew exactly how to minimize the importance of Sheen's protest: we were instructed to be respectful, to provide security to keep the protesters safe, and to just ignore them, or escort them off the property if they became too disruptive.

I offer these contrary examples to make this point: speech acts, however offensive they may seem, are an important means of conveying moral messages to the general public.

Sometimes, we are on the right side of history as UUs, making statements to end horrific government behaviors.  Justice has prevailed time and again when our government tried to stem our protests by relabeling sincere acts of civil disobedience as dangerous, threatening behaviors. Time and again, juries and the court of public opinion refused to accept false threatening characterizations of sincere, morally motivated behaviors when it could be proved there was no imminent danger when the speech was uttered.

Sometimes, we are on the receiving end of history, experiencing some of the free speech tactics that we have used over the decades to stop war, stop production of nuclear weapons, stop racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious persecution of marginalized faith communities.

But, face it.  We taught the religious right everything they know about media attention-getting strategies.

There's no turning back.  All we can do now is beat them at their own game when they use civil disobedience tactics against us.

We have to use smart tactics when we are confronted with obnoxious speech acts.  Call a spade a spade, but, DO NOT let a spade think it has the power of a stacked deck of cards.

Operation Save America behaved shamefully in our New Orleans UU sanctuary.  But, they were not terrorists. Do not label them as such, thereby, letting them think we fear them.

They were haters.  They came to spew hate in a church that preaches the Gospel of Love.

It makes NO sense to overplay our hand by exaggerating the significance of rude, obnoxious public speech acts committed in our sanctuaries.  We can't play the Fear card, and expect to win against bigotry.

Because even in a deck of cards that seems stacked against our minority faith, Love ALWAYS trumps Fear. Love ALWAYS trumps Hate.

May Love triumph today.

Living With Guns: My Commentary Published in July 13 Sunday Eunice News

As a military chaplain, I prayed over too many people who were murdered by their spouses, lovers, or friends. I know first hand that guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
People with guns kill the most people, though.
People with guns kill their spouses, their children, their best friends, their co-workers, their lovers, their neighbors, and even strangers who have done nothing to offend them but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For some strange reason, in the United States of America, we act as if it’s perfectly normal for gun owners to shoot at people when they are mad or sad.
We read in the paper that a man kills his estranged wife, then himself. Ho-hum. Who won last night’s game?
We read that a middle-class man kills four or more of his children. Ho-hum. What’s for dinner?
Our absolute allegiance to the Second Amendment leads us to falsely believe that high murder rates are inevitable if we are to protect our absolute right to bear arms.
But, in fact, the opposite is true.
We can bring down the murder rates in our society and in our state if we do a few things differently: First, we must teach our citizens how to cope with conflict, anger, disappointment without resorting to violence. In states and communities where children, teens and adults are taught it is NEVER okay to hit, attack or shoot another person, murder rates are much lower.
Second, we must provide interventions when we see early signs that a disgruntled youth or adult uses violence against animals or other humans no matter what their “reason” for resorting to violence.
Third, we must demand that the community costs of murder and gun violence are transparent to all taxpayers.
When someone kills their intimate partner, that person may go to jail, but, taxpayers are twice punished. We pay for the criminal trials, prison costs, legal fees, police, hospital and doctor bills.
But, we also have to pay for the victims and survivors of gun violence, such as the nine left behind in a recent St. Landry murder-suicide.
Taxpayers will foot the bill for raising these children for decades. Costs to taxpayers will include a lifetime of trauma counseling, medical care, housing, and special education services for the emotional disturbance that stays with child survivors.
Fourth, we must do a better job of training and regulating the people who own guns. People who own guns MUST demonstrate their competence and fitness to carry and own guns, the same way that automobile drivers must demonstrate their fitness to drive a car, and licensed doctors demonstrate their ability to properly use a scalpel.
There are plenty of laws already on the books that support these goals, but, we don’t bother to enforce the laws we have. Weak enforcement is why the United States of America has insanely high murder and suicide rates.
When I served at Fort Polk as the first woman chaplain in the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment way back in the 1990’s, I saw first hand the impact that strict enforcement of gun and domestic violence laws can have the levels of gun violence in the community.
When the commander made it clear that gun violence would not be tolerated, soldiers learned that their “I just snapped” excuses were as phony as three-dollar bills. They changed their behaviors, and learned how to handle their conflicts like adults.
I remember one soldier who was sentenced to prison for two years for firing a shot in the air to scare his girlfriend. No one was hurt, but the whole base got the message: You will pay a steep price if you take your guns out and use them at the wrong time, in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.
Soldiers learn how to handle their relationships like adults – using words, not fists or guns to solve their problems.
It is never acceptable to take guns out and use them when we are mad at the world. What will it take for our country to embrace this fact and do what we have to do to stop the gun violence in our communities?
Copyrighted July 13, 2014 by Marie deYoung

Skimming MFP - My commentary published in Eunice News on July 6, 2014 Copyright Jul 2, 2014

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!