BESE must clarify unexcused absence policy

Louisiana’s Department of Education needs to cut through the confusion and make it clear: if a child doesn’t show up to school because parents fear la Immigración, it’s not an excused absence.

Last week, as the federal government publicized and launched an inter-agency effort to detain illegal aliens in the New Orleans metropolitan area, the location with a concentration of these scofflaw residents, Jefferson Parish, saw significantly higher truancy in its schools. It is conjectured that this resulted from families of illegal aliens keeping their children out of school for fear that agents would bust into schools and round up children illegally in the country.

That notion is ridiculous, given official directives that the only such intrusions now permitted would occur if a known criminal (likely incognito) was at a school and only after intensive vetting of the process. There are no jump-out boys launching into a school going door-to-door demanding papeles affirming citizenship or permanent residency; all that has been a fantasy propagated by left-wing education administrators and teachers, special interests, politicians, and media to try to score political points.

Tax reform paying off more quickly than thought

 With apologies for stealing and changing this line: OK, Landry, Nelson, Emerson, et. al. were right.

Last week, Louisiana’s Revenue Estimating Conference held its end-of-calendar-year meeting to revise numbers. These revisions can mean the state might have extra money from past budget years to spend on essentially one-time items, extra money for this budget year to spend on anything, and more to spend on the upcoming fiscal year 2027 budget – or it might be reversals in this year where forecasts could cause retrenchments and reduced future expenditures, respectively.

With almost a year of data from changes made during last year’s Third Extraordinary Session of the Legislature now on the books, many of the usual suspects from the collectivist political left then predicted at best “uncertainty,” at worst “budget shortfalls” as a result of flattening tax individual and corporate tax rates, broadening the base a little by excising some exemptions, increasing individual exemption levels, and increasing the sales tax rate. Howls of protest came about how this would prove to be regressive and hurt lowest-income people’s pocketbooks (although one analysis estimated it would cost a whopping $5 extra a year for such a household).