Education Update; Caddo Schools

All right. Education update for the week of May 3rd 1982. In this edition the only governor talks to Representative Jimmy long about education issues facing the legislature. Also Rick Smith examines the controversy surrounding public education in Caddo Parish. Your host for education update Robert Collins welcomed education update at the legislature the House of Representatives has passed the state

appropriations bill sending it on to the Senate. The bill is about 8 million dollars in the red and the Senate committee has refused to tack on a quarter of a million dollar supplement for the professional improvements program Pip's additional money was requested sets Pip's attracted more teachers than had been expected. The program has come under attack for overspending and some legislators are questioning the validity of some of the Pip's courses. The author of the bill which first set up the Pips. State Senator Cecil Picard of Maurice went to the program's defense. At a news conference because ard responded to the charges by saying that the courses shouldn't be judged by their name alone he added that after a year of operation only a few courses have been targeted for cancellation by the Pitt state review committee. And he says the program's tying of teacher pay raises to the completing of academic courses or the conducting of seminars is withstanding some close scrutiny Pip's attracted more than thirty one thousand teachers at a cost of more than 60 million dollars its

first year. The program is expected to cost the state about 80 million dollars next year. In an unusual move federal judge John Parker of Baton Rouge is allowing a local school board to implement its own desegregation plan in allowing the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board to implement a plan which it devised in March. Judge Parker is dropping his own recommendation to convert most middle schools to single grade centers. The judge is leaving his options open he says that if the board's plan doesn't work he'll go to his plan for single great centers. One part of his plan in his new order is creating quite a stir among some residents and school board members. Judge Parker says that students assigned to the Scotland Hill Middle School which is a predominantly black school must show up for class. He says that if they don't they will be banned from ever attending public school in Baton Rouge in the future unless they can show there was some reason for their absence other than trying to avoid desegregation.

The first teacher to be put on trial by the state professional Practices Commission the PPC may well be the first to be cleared to Ritter high school coach Larry Crowe was accused of making improper advances to a female senior student. The charges were made by the girl's parents and Crowe asked the PPC for a public hearing. After five hours of testimony a three member panel found insufficient evidence against the coach. A final decision will be made by the full PPC commission next Monday in red peats parish the school board there has voted to terminate the contracts of one hundred twenty three teachers. The board will be dropping its least experienced teachers. The board says that the reason for the cutback is a lack of students. The rapid school board said Next year is in Rome and is expected to be eighteen hundred fewer students than this year's. The layoffs are expected to affect only teachers without tenure. The board's decision provides for filling any permanent vacancies or sabbaticals

with the laid off teachers. Two parish school boards in south Louisiana have been struggling with the question of how to deal with students who disrupt class in St. Mary Parish. The school board there decided to give its OK to what is known as a timeout box. It's a giant cardboard box with a flap cut out for a door which is used to isolate disruptive students from what teachers call their potential audience. The practice was stopped after complaints had been filed by parents. But even though the board now says it is permissible to use the box it has not decided whether the actual whether actually to use the method. And in Cameron Parish the school board there has gone back to permitting the use of kneeling as a punishment without requiring the teachers to go through a lot of red tape. The school board had at one time amended its corporal punishment policy to add kneeling but the policy required certain steps the teacher had to take including writing a report before the corporal punishment could be used. The board

has now removed kneeling from that formal policy thereby freeing the teacher to use the method without a lot of paperwork. In other news the legislature is now on a 12 day recess after a lot of last minute filing of bills. We thought that this would be a good time to check in with the chairman of the House Education Committee to have him bring us up to date on proposed legislation. Naomi Geller is in our studio with our guest. And more information Naomi. Thank you Robert. The house finished its last minute filing almost an hour before the Senate which is almost an unusual occurrence but also the education bills and proposals were filed well before Monday's deadline. And with us to talk about some of those bills coming up is Representative Jimmy lawn of Natchitoches. He's chairman of the House Education Committee. Representative long Welcome to our show. Thank you. Let's talk about one of your pet projects right off the bat which is which is the gifted and talented school. You know the negatives.

We do have that project and the appropriation bill as well as in the capital outlay bill this year. We will also need to. Man the enabling legislation last year with respect to the size of the board the governor has to build and has. Asserted then most have pulled in the funding of the bill but there are some problems there with the. Size of the board that he also has to look at and as well as two or three other minor changes. There will be some additional legislation. We're hoping that this program the initial legislation calls for this program to be on board on. September 1 83 to 15 or 16 months it really has a lot of work to do. How many people will this attract and who will be affected by this. We hope to have 200 students in the first year they will in 11th grade. From throughout the state. Each parish will be given.

A quote or a number. Consistent with that percentage of the state population. The parish has 10 percent of the state population that it would be allotted 10 percent of students it is a state program. And about how much would that cost the first year the program in North Carolina. Of course the example we're using because this is only be the second residential program in the nation. Their cost is about $6000 a year per student. And of course there would be so set up so it would not be of any cost to the students that would go that would be kind of like a public school. It is a public funded program in order to allow all people in the state have an opportunity to attend what is there are a lot of grants and large grants from various groups which will be North Carolina for example to receive seven million dollars in grants in the first two years. So

those funds would be available but there'd be no individual forms from the parents of the students. One of the other bills that will be coming through your committee one of the most controversial probably will be the move to repeal the creation science law that's on the books. That certainly is an issue. It will be. Before the committee this year however I think there might be a move by some of the proponents of the bill. To defer it for another year to wait on the litigation so it might not be an issue. I know the proponents of the repeal represent a vast Toobin and Terry hope that if they get it out of your education committee that it might stand a chance in the legislature what are its chances of even getting out of your committee. I think it would be difficult due to the emotional. Issue that it is. Difficult to vote against last year but most

don't. I don't know what I would say would be difficult to get a repeal of the one other bill that's going to be coming up in your. Committee will have to do with the home study. Also a move to repeal the home study and it has received the backing of the board of elementary and secondary education. What will you tell your constituents when you go back home about that particular bill. Well the repeal certainly will be an issue however. If the concept of home study has adequate guidelines and safeguards it probably would be allowed to stand a number of states are using home study and effectively using it. I suspect that the emphasis will be more on guidelines and restrictions than on the repeal it's long. Thank you for being on our show and back to you Robert.

Thank you Naomi. Delegates at the Louisiana Parent Teachers Association convention held recently in Shreveport voted to let state lawmakers know that the PTA favors a strong public school system and that private schools should not be allowed to prosper at the expense of the public schools. Vanya Unger of the National PTA office was at that meeting and she echoed the thoughts of the Louisiana group. She says PTA is concerned with the new mood in Washington regarding public schools. We just perceive a definite shift at the moment at the federal level that seems to be moving in the direction of saying that somehow or other the best way to beef up public schools is one to deny them further tax monies and put them in a competitive and I'm quoting them situation. We don't think that that makes good sense. Our major concern is the preservation and the improvement of public education and we see that money is going to the private sector is not really providing good open market place competition that

is creating a divisiveness in the community. It's denying the public schools the wherewithal to me prove where they need improvement. And it's also creating what we are afraid will become a caste system a selective system. It's comparing apples and peaches. It's apropos that this year's PTA meeting was held in Shreveport and Caddo Parish because for the past several months Caddo Parish has been the scene of an intense debate over how the schools there are doing their job and whether they're doing the job they should be doing. Critics of the system suggest that public schools should be bolstered as viable alternatives to government sponsored schools. The debate caught our attention. Rick Smith has compiled a report on the situation Rick. Thanks Robert. To be sure the issues surrounding the school system in Caddo Parish are the same ones found in school districts around the country. The demands for accountability have never been higher. Federal regulations have taken their toll financially and along with that has come a dissatisfaction on the part

of many parents with how public schools are handling the changes. What makes the situation in Caddo so unique is that criticism has come from people who have the influence to make some changes. But supporters of public school say some of those changes will only hurt not help public school diversity first came to the surface in January about two weeks after Caddo Parish voters turned down a proposal for a 1 1/2 cents sales tax to fund a school improvements package. State Representative VFO Neal publicly stated that tax defeat was a protest by the public against the school system. Then local businessmen and Board of Regents member Donal's ATIC sent a letter to The Shreveport Times. In that letters Addicks said I applaud the voters of Caddo Parish for denying this group more money to continue their pedestrian effort to educate our youth. Both O'Neill and Sadoc suggested that private schools were doing a better job of educating kids and perhaps some things like the voucher system should be tried in order to make public schools compete. The local media picked up on the controversy and both television and newspapers devoted in-depth studies to the issue. It became known as public versus private.

But what it really came down to was this Mr. Sadek and Mr. O'Neill feel that the quality of education in Caddo has gone down but the cost of running the school system along with parent dissatisfaction has gone up. You seem to be cast as the bad guy in this local debate that's that's been going on over the quality of public schools. You must have feel that that the public school has a as a rifle place and in our society and our route and that you'd like to see Farson prosper What do you think about that. I don't wait. You are talking about public school but we're really really we're saying we really have government not public school to mean it's public to the standpoint it that everyone has to go to school and this is the school that is supported by tax money. But. If you do it if the system as we appreciate it right this minute

and you've got children they're going through it. This is a one time experience this is not an experience where if it doesn't work you can then whine the child back up take him back down to the age he was before and running through again you simply lose a life in the system if it doesn't work and that's what my concern is I'm not a I'm not an adversary of the public school system I'm an I'm an adversary of what I see today and that and the education with public dollars that that young people are getting. It's just not a good education and it we're not getting value received and we're not getting value received for the reason that I've told you now. I'm not sure that the system can be cured Caddo Parish is not unlike any other section of the United States. Public education meaning education is owned and operated by a government where government is deeply involved in the operation of the system of education. You find education is in trouble all over the United States. It's the object of unhappiness and discontent on

the part of people everywhere. Levels of achievement have been going down constantly for the last 25 years. The unhappiness of taxpayers and parents has been going up and the cost of public education has been going up when America had the best system of education that it has ever had it was a system of free education freedom of education. Education was operated by a private independent parochial churches others government was not involved in education at all not at all until the late part of the nineteenth century. I think government should encourage education. But I'm beginning to wonder more and more whether government has the ability to own and operates to. Its to require and force everyone to attend those schools. That kind of criticism coming from in so influential at first done local school leaders they are proud of their recent accomplishments. For example last May the board succeeded in finalizing the segregation in the parish by striking a consent decree with the Justice Department foregoing the

painful process of implementing a possible judge's order recognizing their own shortcomings the board in August commissioned a citizen study of the school system to try and locate problem areas. Superintendent of Schools Walter Lee thinks the criticism is simply misguided. Some critics have been been tossing around a few accusations that they claim that you're just not doing the job of educating kids that used to be done and it should be done. How much truth do you think there is to that that you're not doing as good a job as you could. I think that's a popular thought. I think that most people are misled about that. I believe that education is better today than most people give credit for. Public schools will always be a reflection of the community. We cannot change the backgrounds of the natures of people. That has to come from the family. And I think nationwide we are concerned about what's happening to people. It is true that we have some children graduating from high school and too many children who

do not read well. Some do not read it all. Children that are poorly educated. But these are children that in prior years dropped out of school. Now the law requires that they be Ensco. And personally I think it's weird that they are we need to put we need to better prepare those children for adult life than what we what we're doing today. But the quality of education is still good. I dare say that the people who are critics are not boosting schools are so say that if those children if those people were in school today they would see that those kids who are willing to apply themselves and those children whose parents are supportive that those children are receiving a better education today than these older people did when they were in school. State Representative Alphonso Jackson of Shreveport sits on the House Education Committee along with B.F. O'Neal who is the committee vice chairman. Jackson doesn't share his colleague's dim view of the

situation in Caddo and strongly opposes any move to weaken the role of public education. We know that the money that we invest in education will pay to Mendis dividends and we talk about people who are welfare cheaters are people who are on welfare the way to break that vicious cycle and extricate them from poverty is to educate them well so that they can become taxpayers instead of tax cheaters and so I'm enthusiastically supporting public education and simply saying that we do not. Need to attack public education because it is the only way we're going to have a secure and supportive quality of life for a lot of the people in this state is to have a viable system of public education all of the children as I mentioned earlier the Caddo school system is currently being studied by a 54 member panel of local citizens. That group was formed at the request of the school board to find out what their priorities should be.

The panel was given a year to complete the study. Committee chairman Elliott Stonecipher has encouraged the public debate because he likes to see people get involved. I think the debate that we've had in Caddo Parish in the past few months. About private versus public or about this public school system has been good for the community for the public school so I think in the final analysis we're going to say that an awful lot of people who never were motivated to before came to the rescue of public education when the attacks were made. The debate's been good it's something that was needed. The people who are speaking on both sides of the issue are people of good conscience. Their heart's in the right place. And you know whatever their position we needed to hear. It was time for that debate. And in the next few months I think we're going to see probably a much better indication of what it really caused. And I think it's going to be good. Stonecipher admits that some pressure has been put on the Committee to release some policemen every findings. The reason for that pressure a new tax election scheduled for May 15th. The school board

says they need the money to complete building construction and renovations that are needed to satisfy the consent decree. They also claim that revenues from the five year tax will keep certain valuable instructional programs intact Donal's attic however is adamant in his belief that approving the tax would be simply throwing good money after bad. Don't get caught up in an idea that that we need to give the system more money because we need to do so and so and private business. You don't give a fat situation more money. You simply trim the fat. That there was a study done by the Carnegie Institute and paid for by the Carnegie Institute for foundation that was released in St. Louis about three or four months ago. And and I think be a full meal went to it. One of the conclusions that they drew was that the the educational systems in different communities in United States those that were educating the children best with those that were operating on the

leanest most all stay out of budget. And that there's a correlation between really being strapped for money and getting the most out of your dollars and education rather than operating a fat operation. And that's really what I'm saying is is this is one fat system that's not getting the job done. And and we need to we need to look at this system and say look how about taken 15 million dollars of administrative money and end and maybe a little less maintenance on this beautiful plant that the school board lives in and put it where it will do the most good. Now that's not so bizarre. And and it's so much of a gosh what a novel approach that's what made this country great. How much truth is there to that that through. You're basically running a bureaucracy that could be cut back to find the money to fund some of these programs. Caddo has a fairly well financed education program but we've not increased the tax rate in Caddo in the last 12 years

and I daresay that that's rather unusual for any public body to be able to live on the same tax rate that they had or same same income right that they had 12 years ago. This is a large operation. Public education is expensive. There is just no way around that. But we feel that we've reached a time now where if we are truly going to identify the needs of children through accountability we have a responsibility to address those needs to help those children. That means mower and the pupil teacher ratio. It means giving specialized help. It means helping those children master skills to do that. We've got to have more teachers and we've got to pay better salaries to teachers. We don't have any choice but to be competitive with the rest of the state and is just going to take some money our school buildings are getting older most of our buildings are more than 30 years of age. So we're asking for a 1 1/2 cent sales tax and a good thing about it

is our people shop in Shreveport will be helping Caddo citizens to support the public education program. On May 15th the voters are going to consider it. One half cent sales tax is being billed somewhat as a referendum on the job. The school board and the school system are doing. Is that a fair assessment of what the tax means and is it is it fair to make that kind of judgment through an election like this. A school board is going to administer the functions that the people put into the system. If they're incompetent if they're doing less than the best job they can do the people have a right to either vote them out of office or not give them any more money. If we've got that kind of problem if majority the people Caddo Parish think our school is on able to correctly administer those who don't then they shouldn't have to die. But I think the larger question.

How much. Of the feeling that people have toward that reward is based on perception. Rather than truth. I don't know I think my 15th is an awful lot of things to referendum Oh many things. And again I think that's appropriate. And perhaps it is appropriate in these days of tight money that attack selection would be used as a vote of confidence on a school system. It's at least one way for voters to feel they've still got local control. But the irony is that the money is needed to help carry out federal mandates fair or not. The lines are drawn in the final tally in Caddo Parish won't be on an account ledger. It will be in the classroom. I don't see where we're giving it more money to use your words has anything to do with whether it's going to survive a fall. It's going to survive a fall. As to whether the quality of education has gotten out and not the dollars that are pumped in because this

school system that operates in my area doesn't have the ability to translate dollars into quality. Now if you really believe that or if I'm right there what it why put more dollars at it all you do is you making yourself. When you go to bed at night you'd say we passed a tax for more dollars and I sleep better. But in your heart if you know that those dollars don't translate to quality then what have you accomplished. I think it's fine and good for people to be critics but they need to be supportive critics. We if our community is going to be strong if our future is going to be insured then it's not so much the extra dollars we have to have and we will have to have some extra money. But it's the support of helping to insure a better education program that's needed rather than just being critical as all the criticism hurt Kolker school system. Yes I think it has I think much of the community has been led to believe in much of

it through the news media that things are bad. Without really analyzing why conditions are the way they are and what might be done to help improve the need to take time to visit schools and see what's going on they need to take time to be supportive to ensure a strong public education program for the future of our children or our future. My opinion test scores and dollar figures don't really tell the story here. How do the school system like so many others is facing the need to change to meet the public's demand for quality. The school boards challenge us to make sure they listen to the public. The public challenge is to make sure they speak with a clear voice without rancor to all the people in Caddo Parish who have spoken out on this issue. I applaud your concern and your candor. Robert. Thank you Rick. Be sure to join us next week when Naomi Gellner will be profiling two private Christian academies one all white one all black. It should make for

some interesting comparisons and contrasts. Until next week for education update. I'm Robert Collins. This. Was a presentation of Louisiana for the drug content.