LA schools best heed Brumley's advice on new rule

Louisiana’s local education agencies should heed State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley’s advice to disregard new and radical rulemaking from the federal Department of Education that likely is unconstitutional that conflicts with present and likely Louisiana law.

Last week, the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden Administration released its recodification of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which lays down rules to which state-regulated (because the U.S. Constitution grants states the power to regulate education provision) education provision must adhere in order tor receive federal grants. The sweeping and unprecedented changes it had telegraphed with its initial filing last year and reinvented Title IX only four years after substantial revision had occurred.

The purpose was to expand coverage, despite the clear wording of statute denying that, of nondiscriminatory classes, redefining “sex” to, among other things, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” It tried to justify this deviance by referring to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated area of law, and almost certainly is unconstitutional for that overreach. Any attempt to deny funding for not following the rule if challenged would lead to the regulation’s overturn by the judiciary.

Shreveport voters face tough call on tax hikes

It’s a tough call this Saturday on Shreveport approving property tax hikes – necessary bromide or throwing good money after bad?

Across three proposals, the city plans to raise around $256 million for capital items. Almost half would go towards roads, streets, bridges, and surface and subsurface drainage systems (2.45 mills), while nearly a third would go to water and sewerage systems (1.6 mills), with the remainder going to public safety, buildings, and recreation (0.95 mills). Unlike measures to fund continuing government operations, the millages will vary depending upon bond issuance amounts and timings, with the city estimating 2027 would be the first year initial millages would be added to tax bills. Eventually, it predicts the total millage almost will double to close to 8 mills.

Regardless, success of any item at the polls will push Shreveport further into the category of the highest-taxed city without consolidated government in Louisiana. Republican current Mayor Tom Arceneaux’s predecessor Democrat Adrian Perkins three times attempted to have bond issues, around that neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars give or take a few dozen millions, in various packages gain voter approval. His first attempt resulted in complete rejection at the polls, his second couldn’t get City Council assent, and in his third only one of five measures, about $71 million dedicated to public safety, passed voter muster.

For Bossier voters, "no" in quadruplicate

For different reasons, Bossier Parish voters should reject all four property tax renewals on Saturday’s ballot and tell the various powers-that-be to try again before it’s too late.

Bossier City has two such items on tap, both of which are identically dedicated to public safety operations and maintenance. Both are ten years in length starting in 2026, pitched at current levies (rolled back from previous authorized maximums, as property values have risen in recent years) of 8.32 and 2.71 mills that would generate about $8.6 million in annual revenue. These do not cover salaries, which are supplemented by a 5.98 mill measure approved at 6.19 mills in 2020.

The city was smarter this time around than back then. Four years ago, with that millage then set at 6.00, in essence it allowed for a future tax increase by the city asking for 6.19 and received negative publicity for that although the measure passed. Then as now, it occurred within a year of city elections; the next year the mayor and two city councilors got dumped by voters. So, this time the city pinned the renewals at the current rates, and hopes the assessment report from the parish that soon will be completed will show increased values and allow for a roll back later this year, just in time for elections next year.

Pass bill to rein in higher education subversion

Perhaps the most important bill under the radar in this year’s regular session of the Louisiana Legislature would rein in excesses against free expression in the state’s higher education system.

SB 486 by Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh would prohibit preferential treatment based upon race, color, ethnicity, national origin, political affiliation, or sex; discrimination in the recruitment or admission of students or in the recruitment or employment of employees; requiring as a condition of admission or employment that the applicant submit an ideological statement; promoting instruction that the moral character, racial attitudes, and responsibility or guilt for past group actions of an individual is determined by race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or sex; and would ban compelled expression contrary to a student’s personal political ideas or affiliation.

During a Senate Education Committee hearing last week, Seabaugh noted behaviors the bill would prevent at present occur at state institutions. Several examples he drew from Louisiana State University, despite a fake pullback from formal diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies and information dissemination, moves publicized in leftist media. He emphasized that bureaucratic name changes and public removal of media that glorified what the bill would make illegal hadn’t stopped these practices behind the scenes.

Times change, Bossier illegal behavior doesn't

A whole generation goes by, and nothing changes for Bossier Parish apparently playing fast and loose with the law when it comes to squeezing money from the citizenry.

The Bossier Watch transmission of Apr. 16 contained a couple of minutes of commentary and video of a sign reading “VOTE SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024 BOSSIER PARISH LIBRARIES” planted near a roadway. The hosts recounted they had seen some around, although the exact location of this one was unknown. On that date is the spring municipal runoff elections in Louisiana, where a 7.43 mils property tax renewal to fund Bossier Parish libraries reengaging in 2026 for 10 years is the one item that will appear on ballots parish-wide.

What follows is a reprint of a post I made at my Louisiana-centric blog site, Between the Lines, on Dec. 30, 2010 that reviewed events of four years previous. (Keep in mind nearly 18 years ago that the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway stopped at the southern end of the now-Brookshire Grocery Arena). It’s amazing how little things (and people involved) change:

Bill to deny foundational CRT prevents hatred

If nothing else, SB 262 by Republican state Sen. Valarie Hodges would inhibit in Louisiana racial division and hatred.

The bill, currently passed out of the Senate into the House of Representatives, would add to the state’s Parental Bill of Rights that schools “shall not discriminate against their child by teaching the child that the child is currently or destined to be oppressed or to be an oppressor based on the child's race or national origin.” This addresses the use of critical race theory, or the idea that racism is pervasive in all societal institutions shaped historically by, if not currently dominated by, people of Caucasian ancestry, as the foundational tool by which to shape instruction.

Similar to Marxism, CRT bases itself on a series of unfalsifiable, if not empirically unverifiable or logically suspect, propositions that if questioned automatically connotes racist actions (or, if the analyzer is non-white, axiomatic of a false consciousness), making the whole enterprise intellectually lazy and devoid of true scholarship. It increasingly has become a tool by those ideologically compatible with its policy aims – strong government action to level differences in outcomes of resource allocations – for instruction from the academy on down.

Unrepentant left still opposing children's needs

Don’t expect apologies from Louisiana’s leftist institutions and activists having now been caught out on supporting the erroneous “gender affirmation” model of addressing difficulties faced by a small number of youths, which state policy-makers continue to address.

The tiny proportion of youths who express “gender dysphoria,” or a feeling their mental maps of themselves are incongruent with their physical sex, has multiplied in numbers over the past decade. Until then, from the last part of the 20^th century medical professionals addressed this through watchful waiting as children, perhaps with psychological therapy, sorted out their feelings. Data indicated that feelings of this dysphoria were highly related to, if not a reflection of, other psychological maladies and that most children by their adult years shed the condition.

But in the early 21^st century the competing “gender affirmation” model developed in the U.S. and was exported globally. Over time the approach became more radicalized, dictating that even the youngest children who appeared to see themselves associated with typical conceptions of one physical sex while the other, whether consciously picking up on any cues to do that from adults called in to evaluate them, had to be catered to with social and even physical interventions to physically alter them to the sex with which they identified at that particular point in time.

Protest restriction bill enhances expression

Don’t be misled by the usual suspects’ disingenuous blather about “free speech.” HB 737 by Republican state Rep. Kellee Dickerson doesn’t inhibit that; rather, it promotes free expression.

The bill would prohibit picketing near a person’s residence which interferes with, disrupts, threatens to disrupt, or harasses the individual's right to control, use, or enjoy his residence, and has passed the Louisiana House of Representatives. Leftist critics have bemoaned its progress, calling its potential application overbroad by not allowing protesting on the street or right-of-way and potentially an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and assembly.

As to constitutionality, that’s a moot point, because Louisiana already has on its books a very similar law. R.S. 14:401, the law for decades, prohibits demonstrations near residences of judges, jurors, trial witnesses, or court officers, and it’s never faced a challenge. Legally, the judiciary recognizes that people engaged in official business of the state have a right when not performing official business not to have their lives disrupted at a nonpublic place.

Ten Commandments bill to present needed test

Despite protestations of opponents not quite up on things, as long as Louisiana treads carefully a bill working its way through the Legislature will have the practical effect of displaying a legal-paper-sized copy of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, and even some private school ones, from kindergarten on up and deemed constitutional.

HB 71 by Republican state Rep. Dodie Horton would mandate this. The bill states that they can use public funds or accept donated copies. Further, any private school that accepts state funds, which at present would be some nonpublic elementary and secondary education schools and perhaps even private colleges, would be subject to the same. The bill passed the House of Representatives with few dissenters and now moves along to the Senate.

Misperceptions about the issue abound. For one thing, two states already have such laws in place (and several others are considering these). Less demonstrative is North Dakota’s, now three years old, which simply states that local school boards can order this along with a display of other historical documents. In place for about a couple of decades, South Dakota’s leaves open in the public school system the authority to place a copy as long as it is not too conspicuous, giving the option the post other documents of cultural, legal, and historical significance as well.

Work needed on college pricing autonomy bill

On its surface a bill before the Louisiana Legislature that might aid higher education, HB 862, if not changed would backfire, if not undermine, in deliverance of quality tertiary education.

The bill, by Democrat state Rep. Jason Hughes, would grant institutions the ability to establish and raise fees and differential tuition, the former across the board and the latter for more expensive and/or high-demand programs. These could increase up to ten percent annually. This would relax the constitutional standard that legislative supermajorities only could raise these.

The strategy here rightly emphasizes that raising revenues for higher education must come from its consumers. While Louisiana higher education isn’t where it was a quarter-century ago when it had about the lowest tuition in the country and consequentially an enormous relative taxpayer subsidy to public colleges, the corrective measures that begun about 15 years ago to right the imbalance faltered in recent years. At present, the state still ranks only 30^th among its brethren in average senior-level tuition charged – which overstates because around 28 percent of in-state undergraduates enjoy Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars awards that pay for tuition and varying amounts of fees.