Are the members of the Bossier Parish School Board and Superintendent Jason Rowland merely ignoramuses, or are they so craven as to put their own self-interests ahead of children’s needs?
Last week, the Board met – and in special session, no less, at increased taxpayer expense so triggered they were – to pass a resolution specifically opposing HB 745 by Republican Rep. Julie Emerson. The bill would create education savings accounts that could be used to pay for educational expenses, including attendance of nonpublic schools but not home schooled, phased in over three years starting next academic year. Upper-middle-income and higher families would receive 55 percent of the state’s per student contribution to local schools, others would receive 80 percent, and for those families with children with disabilities each would receive 160 percent. Any funds raised locally by a local education agency would remain unaffected.
Yet ultimately the Board voted unanimously (Republican Sherri Pool being absent) for the resolution, which was full of dubious claims easily rebutted. Unfortunately, financial statistics about education notoriously are difficult to come by and often quite out-of-date. The federal government has some final numbers only as recently as 2021 and the state in aggregate form has others incredibly only up to academic year 2018. Still, some conclusions may be drawn from these and likely relational rankings and other comparisons haven’t changed a whole lot in the present.
Those data invalidate the resolution’s assertion that Louisiana “has failed to adequately fund K-12 public education.” In fact, from 2002-2020, inflation-adjusted education revenue grew 32.1 percent that ranked 12th highest in the U.S. Inflation adjusted salaries on average did dip 1.7 percent, 27th best among the states, but that was more than offset by a near doubling in benefits over the period, also the 12th highest in growth rate.
These trends place Louisiana right in the middle of the pack as far as revenues and expenditures on a per pupil basis, ranking 26th in revenues and 28th in current spending. Collectively, the state’s LEAs are over-reliant on federal (10th) and local (18th) sources compared to other states, making its LEAs less reliant on state dollars (39th). That’s as a deliberate consequence of the Minimum Foundation Program, that reduces state aid to LEAs that provide more support for education, although not entirely proportionally so for every extra local dollar of effort they lose something less than a dollar in MFP aid.
That base rate per pupil this year of just over $4,000, before any additions for factors such as local effort, comprised 30 percent of the 2021 average total current spending of just under $13,400. In light of these numbers, it’s hard to argue that in comparison to other states that not enough resources are coming education’s way, and even if you did it’s clear the state has done more than most to boost its contribution in recent years.
Although overall current spending is in about in the middle, that pattern doesn’t replicate across categories. Among the states, total per student instruction spending ranks 32nd, while general administration is 19th and school administration is 23rd. Any complaints about teacher compensation being too low – and remember that Louisiana ranks only 37th in cost of living among the states so on an adjusted basis its spending would rank higher, including on salaries and benefits – must begin by questioning disproportionately high degree of spending outside of the classroom, even as the state mandates that 70 percent of spending be for instruction.
Bossier Parish is much worse insofar as instructional effort. Whereas across the state 64.1 percent of spent dollars went to teacher compensation, in Bossier it was only 54.7 percent, which ranked fifth lowest among the state’s LEAs in AY 2018. Yet in terms of total spending per pupil it ranked in the 40th percentile, so clearly an imbalance in favor of administration existed.
But instead of reallocating spending away from administration towards teacher pay raises, in AY 2019 the Board – several of whose members then still serve on it today – in its wisdom decided to put almost 24 mils of tax increases on the ballot, alleging this was the way to increase salaries. Had voters approved this 40 percent hike, it would have taken the third-highest property tax rate for LEAs in the state and made it the highest by far. Instead, voters decisively rejected this. (The 1.75 percent sales tax levied remains, a bit below the average of all rates across state LEAs of just over 2 percent.)
Had voters not rebelled, Bossier would have zoomed up the ranks of Louisiana LEAs in local effort. In AY 2018, it ranked 26th (33 percentile) in local revenues and 46th (67 percentile) in state revenues. The reason why it ranked only 42nd overall is its 66th place – three from the bottom – in federal aid, in a state that overall disproportionately draws federal education dollars. Since then, its spending per pupil has soared by two-thirds, yet it seems this isn’t enough.
In short, if in fact Bossier school officials see themselves shortchanged in funds, perhaps they could do a better job in hustling for federal dollars (the parish citizenry’s above-average income for Louisiana parishes – 18th highest – doesn’t diminish the fact higher-income parishes are drawing much more federal money) and put more money into instruction and less into administration, rather than hold out their hands to have the state or local taxpayers grease them.
The problem for Bossier schools, insofar as any financial concerns go, isn’t that the state doesn’t give it enough money – in AY 2023, 39 percent of revenues or $144 million came from the MFP, the same proportion and amount raised by sales and property taxes – but that it doesn’t seek more federal dollars and what dollars do come in it overweighs towards bureaucracy and administrators. In other words, any perceived money problems start with the Board and now Rowland himself (although he assumed his current position only at the end of last year).
This failure to recognize own culpability resonates through the resolution’s entirely deceptive claim of “diverting public dollars to private schools and other programs through Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) without fully funding public schools [that] disadvantages our students and schools.” Its phrasing implies that dollars to fund ESAs would come at expense of public education funding, despite the fact the two aren’t tied legally in any way. Plus, the bills for consideration permit some ESA money to go to public schools to allow nonpublic students to access certain programs, and the bills don’t even commit the state to funding ESAs; that funding is contingent whereas the money public schools receive through the legal mechanism of the MFP and property and local sales taxes are compulsorily supplied.
In fact, because the ESA bills don’t touch local funds, if students end up leaving Bossier public schools to attend nonpublic schools – and in the fiscal note for the bill’s version on the Senate side, SB 313 by GOP state Sen. Rick Edmonds it’s estimated only about one percent of students will do that to start – more dollars will be left per student for Bossier to spend. The resolution avoids acknowledging that in financial terms LEAs will become better off under the ESA bills.
Finally, the resolution moans about how “providing public dollars to ESAs without requiring the same state accountability testing imposed on public school students is irresponsible public policy.” But that sentiment ignores that an accountability measure is built into to the concept of ESA: if a participating school doesn’t graduate a high enough proportion of students (requirements for which the state regulates that apply equally to all schools), or perform to other likings of parents, they simply don’t choose to send their kids to those schools. The better a nonpublic school does, the more dollars it will attract; that’s the accountability mechanism that public schools get to avoid, who have students shoveled to them because of where families live, regardless of school quality.
As it turns out, this method of accountability works to benefit both public and nonpublic schools, when reviewing research related to academics. As the data show, the rising tide promoted by school choice lifts all boats with public school students generally showing improved performance where there are ESA programs, and at the very least these don’t cause foundering of public schools academically. (Nor do ESA programs harm the finances of public schools, according to national data.) Research also indicates that while school choice programs like the ESA bills under consideration have as often as not increased student learning, these have shown nearly universal success in promoting graduation, college attendance, and obtaining a college degree. The subgroup showing the strongest positive effects in all cases has been black students.
That’s not surprising, given that black students disproportionately attend poorer-performing schools and so those families with a choice option exercise it. It’s no accident that, compared to other races, black families are more likely to use their ESA dollars to pay for nonpublic school tuition. Indeed, in a 2021 survey 84 percent of black parents supported ESAs, as they see these programs as a liberation mechanism for their children trapped in underperforming schools that likely also are more dangerous and less amenable to inculcating a culture of achievement.
Which underscores the fantastically surreal, if not incredibly stupid, remark Rowland made on the same day of the meeting. In a video the district made, apparently as a lobbying tool, where Rowland appears with two other nearby rural district superintendents, he stated that “ESAs are just another form of segregation, a modern form of segregation,” referring to the segregation of students by race in Bossier and elsewhere in the south decades ago.
Despite the fact that ESA bills won’t do much to affect attendance in public schools, despite the fact that black students disproportionately benefit from ESA programs, despite the fact black families overwhelming support choice, and despite the fact that choice programs have a racial integrating effect and that private schools tend to have fewer racial tensions, Rowland actually seems to believe this? After decades in public education, it’s hard to believe he would be that ignorant about a major issue in his profession even if just a classroom teacher, much less head of an entire school system, and with that remark brings shame to parish schools.
Or maybe he, as well as board members whose remarks seemed to indicate the special meeting and resolution were Rowland’s idea, and they aren’t so out-to-lunch but instead are just disingenuously trying to deflect attention from their real objection to ESAs. Perhaps subconsciously, GOP Member Glen Bullard, who spoke on the resolution, let that slip when he spoke about the entire thing being about “money.”
Because with ESAs, board members and administrators would have fewer state taxpayer dollars to control, because they would be educating fewer students. Each student who opts out of public education means one less allotment of MFP dollars. Further, enough of that happens and you have fewer staff and eventually fewer facilities. It means downsizing government, which especially is anathema to those part of the government monopoly model of education who see success as a function of how big their bureaucracy can be. Rather than promote policy that enhances education regardless of how its delivered, they’re more interested in protecting turf, because the more turf they have, the more power they have.
Either way, as a board member or superintendent, this opposition to ESAs signals unsuitability to lead on education policy. The data support school choice and refute objections to it, so if you are against it and sign off on refutable, if not contrafactual, arguments opposing it, you either don’t understand what you’re doing or you do and you’re deliberately choosing to work for your own interests ahead of those of children. Either way disqualifies you from having entrusted to you the parish’s children, something that voters need to remember in 2026, if not seeing amateur historian/social scientist/polemist Rowland discharged before then.
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