Zesty Louisiana Education Politics
East Baton Rouge Parish Teachers are under siege and need our help
Posted on March 9, 2014
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For the past month I’ve been interviewing and receiving testimonials from East Baton Rouge Teachers in most of the non-magnet high schools. This investigation started as a conversation with a teacher who happened to be a recent follower. They explained no one speaks for them, no one sees their stories and teachers in EBR are terrified to speak out about the travesties and indignities being heaped upon them in the name of improving outcomes, as determined by some easily manipulated statistics and School Performance (SPS) scores. I have listened and I was honestly shocked and infuriated by what I heard. Our teachers are under siege, from all quarters, and only a few on the breaking edge are able to speak out, even anonymously.
I’ve spoken with or corresponded with teachers and many different schools, teaching a wide variety of subjects. These teachers have spanned different experience levels both genders and the stories all sound sadly similar. In the past few years EBR’s discipline policies and promotion policies have been weakened substantially. There are two absurd policies that appear to be coming from the Superintendent Bernard Taylor’s office. I phoned the EBR central office to speak to someone in charge of discipline hearings for EBR. (Taylor has never returned any of my calls or e-mails to date even on positive stories I’ve tried to pitch to him, so I didn’t bother with him.) I
