New scoring reveals hard truths about LA schools

Parents and researchers might be pleased with Louisiana’s new accountability scoring system, but a lot of school board members and educrats won’t be.

This week, the state’s Department of Education released academic year 2025 results, times two. It reported school and district performance scores using both the current 150-point metric that separates elementary, middle, and high schools where elementary schools had three components, middle schools four, and high schools five components in score computation, along with new a 100-point scale approved last year based upon the proportion of students who achieve certain benchmarks with high schools having three components and all others two.

Specifically, elementary and middle schools would have 54 percent scored on student growth in math and English, with special attention paid to the lowest achieving students, and 46 percent with student proficiency in math, English, science, and social studies. For high schools, the former would be proportioned at 42 percent and the latter at 33 percent, with the additional component of 25 percent comprised of on-time graduation, readiness on a nationally recognized exam, and preparation to enter the work world or further studies.

Renewable energy, not data centers, cost consumers

Louisiana may stand to profit both in having lower electricity rates and increased economic growth, from the policy stupidity of other states

As the number of data centers explodes throughout the country, only now is Louisiana starting to gain traction with the proliferation. The state ranks 35^th in number with ten operational (out of 1,926 in the country), but with nine under construction is third-most in ratio of being built to existing yet is close to the bottom of ratio of announced to existing (even if the two announced are massive in size). It’s 23^rd in space and 13^th in wattage used, so it punches above its weight and both totals should increase sharply within the next couple of years (the Hyperion project alone when expanded to its full capacity will increase wattage by over two-and-a-half times all existing state center output).

One reason why Louisiana is off to a good start is its energy prices. Among industrial users, the most recent (August) pricing ranked it lowest in the country. At 6.28 cents per kilowatt/hour, it’s almost a third less than the national average of 9.06, and well below the costs of the top states in numbers of centers (only Texas is close).

BC Council should make good ordinance great

The Bossier City Council should take a good idea – to the chagrin of Republican Mayor Tommy Chnadler – and extend it further and seriously.

This week, the Council will take up an ordinance to give its members at least a passing acquaintance with all of the dozens of mayor nominees and Council potential confirmations. The intended new law would require the mayor to present nominees in some fashion, even if already serving and up for reappointment, to councilors along with biographical information and records for incumbents at least 30 days before an approval vote. Further, a previously denied nominee could not come up again for reappointment for at least 90 days after the negative vote. And all nominees would have to appear in front of the Council at a meeting of it.

Councilors, four of whom just started mid-year with the remainder having completed just one term, appear tired of the old wink-wink-nod-nod system characteristic of the graybeards washed out of the Council over the past two election cycles, allied as the deposed councilors were with former mayors who off to the side decided beforehand who would get to hand out what patronage plum to whom. Names, sometimes with no publicly-revealed qualifications and/or never appearing in front of the Council, would pop up on agendas without any warning to all councilors and stamped into their slot like on an assembly line.

Glimmer of hope for NO, but clowns still in charge

While East Baton Rouge Parish’s metropolitan government is trying to right a ship taking on water, New Orleans elected officials and voters are showing at least a few signs they are halting the rearranging of deck chairs and actually want finally to do something about reversing the protracted agony of their sinking ship, events culminating in last week’s elections demonstrate.

Mismanagement has been a historical feature, not bug, of ruling New Orleans, but since the late 20^th century this has gone onto steroids. Most of the 21^st has featured all of a male hustler who misplayed an unfortunate but unanticipated chance to make major headway in arresting the city’s demographic and economic decline into using his influence corruptly to earn an orange jumpsuit, a lackey legacy more concerned about making symbolic political statements than in trying to reverse the decline, and a female hustler who checked out long ago concerning city governance to live high off the hog on taxpayer expense that may earn her an orange jumpsuit as well. City councilors for their part, if not getting convicted, either actively have participated in benign neglect or gone along with digging the hole deeper.

A month ago, the city found itself in its worst human-caused disaster ever, fiscal in nature. Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who gives the appearance that she can’t wait to get out of office and work on her criminal defense, spent Wuhan coronavirus money like a drunken sailor and budgeted entirely unrealistically in watching revenues evaporate and expenses mount to send the city calling on the state to bail it out. After various state officials demanded real accountability, it hesitated as if its officials – now really led by incoming Democrat mayor and current City Councilor Helena Moreno – thought they could get a better deal. Reality intruded and instead they struck a face-saving deal essentially the same as the one they had tried to reject: oversight by a state official, Legislative Auditor Mike Waguespack’s office, in exchange for a $125 million bridge loan for a narrow range of authorized expenditures, at a lower rate than first proposed.

Tax-weary EBR voters turn back sketchy renewals

Last weekend, the “Thrive” plan didn’t thrive in the voting booth. It’s important to understand why and what are the implications.

The consolidated government of East Baton Rouge Parish had on the ballot a corrective plan backed by Republican Mayor-President Sid Edwards. Upon his taking office, it soon became clear that metro government was facing a deficit that only promised to grow, so Edwards came up with the plan. This largely was a consequence of the leaving of the cash cow that now is the separate city of St. George that subsidized the profligacy of past elected Democrats that was so egregious St. George residents constitutionally compartmentalized and fought off a lawsuit from the perpetrators trying to cancel that.

In essence, the plan would slice money from three over-funded dedications and divert some of that to the general fund for ongoing operating expenses. Money going to the parish library system would be the lion’s share affected, but little slices of funding for pest abatement and for the Council on Aging also were targeted. Additionally, the city-parish would divert over $52 million of the fat $121 million the library sat on – far above its projected capital outlay needs with plenty of recent transfer already to the Capital Projects Fund for that purpose – to pay off debt and use the savings as another source of funds.

Story frames poorly Landry role in hirings

Mainstream journalism has evolved into often promoting an agenda through news stories employing implication and innuendo. A recent story about leadership at Louisiana State University provides an apex example.

This month, the LSU System gained a new president in former McNeese State University Pres. Wade Rousse, and a new LSU Baton Rouge chancellor in former University of Alabama Provost James Dalton. The LSU Board of Supervisors, a near-majority of whom have been appointed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry along with its presiding officer, made the selections and in the process split the job from its previously combined status under William Tate IV, who left and took with him a few others to the Rutgers University system early in Landry’s term.

The Baton Rouge Advocate’s Tyler Bridges penned a story related to this, which also broadly looked at recent university head honcho appointments. Purporting to reveal the role Landry had in this, it slyly pushed a narrative that not only did Landry have a large influence over the process but also it was extensive to the point that it may be detrimental to academic accreditation by alleged politicization of the process.

Bridges ran this argument in two ways. One was by framing the process as deviant compared to past searches, especially with Tate. Landry was described as telling some supervisors that he thought Rousse would do well and said he didn’t go so far as did his predecessor Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards in Tate’s selection, pointing out that Edwards previously had hosted South Carolina officials including Tate and supervisors at the Governor’s Mansion and lauded Tate.

This assertion of Edwards favoritism Bridges attempted to torpedo with comments made by Edwards’ commissioner of administration Jay Dardenne, who had applied for the job, by Robert Dampf, an Edwards’ loyalist who was board chairman then and was replaced recently by Landry, and by Edwards himself, denying that. But the facts of the search paint a very different picture.

In an initial list of over two dozen including Dardenne, Tate wasn’t on the list. In a narrowed list of eight, he wasn’t there. But suddenly, lo and behold at the Supervisors meeting to vet the eight  Tate – who never had headed a university system much less a university system – was added to the list and interviewed on the spot, leading to him appearing on a semifinalist list that included then-University of Louisiana System head Jim Henderson Anybody experienced in academia will tell you this sequence of events is a hallmark of a forced selection; late in the process the headhunter firm was told to cull its files or contacts and find someone who fit a profile, in this case likely a minority with a background in administration or research involving diversity, inclusion, and equity issues, to match the governor’s agenda.

Surprise: days later, Tate gets it, with Dampf calling him a “great leader.” Of course, he and Edwards won’t admit publicly the latter’s role in the process – and, curiously, Bridges’ story was entirely incurious about these details which kicks the props out of its argument. By comparison, Landry’s role in Rousse’s hiring seems quite modest.

As it also seems with the hiring at the University of Louisiana Monroe of new president Louisiana native Carrie Castille. The story also alludes to Landry’s praising Castille to corral her over Louisiana Delta Community College’s one-time interim chancellor Chris Broadwater. But it neglects to mention Castille’s extensive higher education career while Broadwater had been in that business only a few years (currently a corporate lawyer for a business with an extensive history of state contracts), after resigning from the House of Representatives midway through Edwards’ first term as it had become clear his loyalty to Edwards was costing him influence among his fellow Republicans who controlled the chamber. Although the final vote is not public, it’s likely that Edwards appointees on the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors got him in the race and almost pushed him past the finish line.

The other tack Bridges takes is to hint that Landry’s involvement was extensive enough to threaten accreditation of state colleges by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges for politicization, quoting Dardenne to back that up. However, that judgement is entirely validated when reviewing how SACSCOC investigated a charge that Florida Republican Gov. Rick DeSantis interfered with the hiring of The New College of Florida’s president, which on the surface indicates much more involvement by him than in the accusations against Landry. SACSCOC reaffirmed nothing untoward happened, but if Bridges bothered to gather that information in assessing the claim, inappropriately either he sat on it or his editors removed it.

Thus, the article tries to insinuate that Landry’s role in the hirings were problematic. That tells us more about the general mainstream media’s antipathy towards Landry than actually providing enlightenment on the incident.

Congress KO's bad policy LA legislators wouldn't

Buzzkill! What Louisiana legislators with feet of clay refused to do members of Congress had the fortitude to do to prevent soon people without a “medical” reason from getting high legally in the state.

One of the downplayed aspects of the tussle between Democrats and Republicans to pass at least a temporary continuing federal budget, accomplished this week, was that three appropriations bills would move forward to fund their areas for the entire fiscal year, one of these being the Department of Agriculture’s colloquially known as the “farm bill.” In it was a provision that starting the next fiscal year would ban sales of hemp-related products if each container has more than 0.4 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive portion of cannabis that comes from the hemp plant..

The 2018 farm bill legalized using industrial hemp, but failed to put adequate restrictions on the use of THC from it, defining usage by weight instead of total amount. The marketplace abhors a void and so it stepped in to create consumable products as high as 15 mg per unit. While these are smaller amounts relative to what may be sold legally as medical marijuana or illegally as lids on the street, take enough of them and you can cop a buzz.

Open electoral season has begun on Arceneaux

A year out from Shreveport’s 2026 mayoral election and a month removed from Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux’s reelection campaign announcement, finally a Democrat opponent has emerged which tells more about the tone the contest will take than who will be an actual threat.

Arceneaux won in 2022 because of the negative impression his runoff opponent Democrat former state Sen. Greg Tarver had created among some activist Democrats and in the electorate who should have been natural supporters. This means Arceneaux had a target on his back from the moment he took office in the eyes of black Democrats, who feel a majority-black electorate never should have allowed a white Republican into the mayoralty.

Arceneaux has had his ups and downs given a tough situation, as a result of poor decisions by his Democrat predecessors over the previous quarter-century, exacerbated by a City Council gerrymandered to produce five Democrats of seven able to pass legislation over his head. This has produced a largely-cautious, almost technocratic approach to governing by the GOP mayor.

Veterans Day, 2025

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Sunday through Thursday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Easter, Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Monday, Nov. 11 being Veterans' Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.

Bad ruling doesn't slow LA LNG export growth

Even an activist rogue elected state judge won’t be able to slow the momentum liquified natural gas transport and export has established in Louisiana, reaping a windfall to Louisiana’s economy.

Last month, independent 38^th District Judge Penelope Richard ruled in favor of two of three claims made by three leftist environmentalist special interest groups. Richard previously had served as a public defender before election to the court as a Democrat, but more recently ran as an independent as Cameron Parish voter registrants signing up as Republicans began to become the district’s plurality.

In buying claims that the state (and by implication the federal government, which approved of the environmental impact statement earlier this year) ignored catastrophic anthropogenic global warming as a factor in issuing a permit, she wholly created new law using an absurdly expansionist view of the state Constitution that obligates the state to consider CAGW in permitting, and echoed that approach in alleging the state didn’t consider “environmental justice” as a factor – even though months earlier the Environmental Protection Agency repudiated the entire concept in its enforcement actions.