Louisiana Educator: Our Rubber Stamp BESE

Louisiana Educator: Our Rubber Stamp BESE:

Our Rubber Stamp BESE

BESE continued to rubber stamp Superintendent White's recommendations in committee actions yesterday, even when such actions seemed ridiculous by any reasonable standard. BESE members Carolyn Hill, Lottie Beebie, educators and others in the audience repeatedly questioned the logic of the continued moves toward privatization of our public schools. All to no avail.

But White had his well funded astro-turf organizations primed to make the usual appeals to the Board for more choice (privatization) even when their arguments were non-sensical. For example, in the debate over the acceptance of a whole new batch of charter schools for the failed Baton Rouge Recovery District, parents who had been brought in by BAEO and Stand for Children, explained how their children had been poorly served by the previous charter schools in the BR Recovery District and gave this as a reason why BESE should continue to approve more charters!!! Some of us in the audience scratched our heads at this twisted logic and then again when a teacher from one of the defunct charters said that it was time that BESE added stability to the staffing of the schools in the RSD by approving the new batch of charters. This is how it went. Beebie and Hill just kept asking "how does this make sense?" But the votes on our rubber stamp BESE kept going down 9 to 2 for whatever the privatizers wanted.

Questioned also was the logic of shutting down the Louisiana Virtual School by White, which had been in operation for years offering students all over the state courses that they could not