In a recent story in the Advocate about Governor Landry hiring a new education policy advisor, and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education appointing a new executive director, the following statement appeared, “Education has been a top priority for Landry since taking office.” I find that statement somewhat farcical since Landry’s ‘Dream Package’ of education reform just passed in the most recent legislative session entailed allowing school boards to hire chaplains, requiring public schools to post a copy of the Ten Commandments in each classroom, clarifying how parents can avoid getting their children vaccinated for school, setting up Educational Saving Accounts to financially bail out private schools with taxpayers’ money, allowing home schooled students to participate in public school’s extra-curriculum activities, specifying the pronoun a child can be referred to in school, and the lowering of teacher requirements.
Initially, he had no problems with our legislators completely eliminating pre-k education funding, which due to public outcries, at the last minute, was eventually restored to last year’s funding level to service a paltry 2000 students.
Governor Landry made no push to allocate funds for K-3 tutorial programs, the grades which are the crucial ones where Louisiana students begin to fall behind national peers in their educational skills. And he proposed no other legislation that directly impacted learning. Additionally, he has told higher education leaders to plan for a $250 million cut in their funding next fiscal year.
So basically our esteemed governor has done very little to address the actual educational needs of our children by focusing on classroom skills learning, but instead chose to laser in on the ‘hot topics’ of the day that have little or no impact. Hardly a governor with education as a top priority, so please stop saying so.
