St, Mary's, in eastern New Orleans, is among schools accepting public school students under the new voucher program.

About 2,300 New Orleans public school students have been offered slots in private schools under the state’s voucher program, leaving about 5,500 spots still available at schools across the state, the Louisiana Department of Education announced today.

The department unveiled the list of private schools slated to accept those students today, as well as other schools across 33 parishes available this fall for students outside of New Orleans participating in the voucher program, officially known as Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence.

Legislators in early April approved a statewide launch of the program, which was originally a pilot program limited to New Orleans. Though the law was originally written so that low-income students at failing schools could attend the private or high-performing public schools of their choice, it’s the private school provision that has drawn  the most attention in the past few months. Critics have said that funding private schools with public dollars raises constitutional issues.

Proponents, however, have said that the dollars should follow the student.

Of the 125 schools students can choose from, only one, Park Vista School in St. Landry Parish, is a public school.

State superintendent of education John White says he believes more public schools will participate as the program grows.

“This is a promising start for a program that will provide thousands of options for Louisiana families now, and increasingly in the future,” he said.

White said that schools in New Orleans have made “tremendous” academic gains with scholarship students in recent years, and that he anticipates more academic success when results are announced from this year’s standardized tests. Private schools enrolled in the program are mandated by state law to give vouchered students the standardized tests administered in public schools, so the state can track progress uniformly.

State law says that schools with fewer than 10 vouchered students must not publicly release test data, in order to protect the identity of the students. White said the department will follow these rules when releasing data on outcomes.

It’s not yet clear what accountability measures White will impose on private schools that accept vouchers. State law mandates that he come up with clear measures for accountability on or before August 1, but doesn’t offer guidance on how to do so.

State lawmakers have clamored for White to develop ways to remove from the voucher program schools with chronically low scores on standardized tests.

When we received a tip that City Councilman Jon Johnson owned a rundown Lower 9^th Ward property that had received a taxpayer-financed loan for renovation – yet hadn’t been significantly fixed up – it seemed like a worthwhile story to look into.

But was the timing of the tip a bit suspect?

After all, the information landed in our laps as Johnson and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell are in a contentious standoff with four others on city council, with the pair delaying action on a number of issues by skipping meetings.

Certainly, keeping a file of embarrassing information on your political colleagues is a practice as old as politics. When things get tense, you threaten them privately or publicly release the material, if you need to get tough.

Was that happening here? Was The Lens being used to further someone’s political fight? Maybe. Was it still a story worth pursuing? Absolutely.

Though it happens, few news tips come to us from disinterested parties seeking only to serve the truth. Most people have an agenda.  We take such things into consideration, but in the end, we choose to run down a story because it meets our standards and will be a service to our readers.

When we determined that everything checked out – and after we tried to talk to Johnson to get his side of the story – we let people know that one of their elected officials who talks tough on blight is the owner of a home that neighbors consider an eyesore, and that he is past the deadline to use the state-administered loan. Further, neighbors wanted to know why the city hadn’t cracked down on him, as it has on other properties nearby.

As a result of our questions, the city sent and inspector out and cited Johnson, and the property will move through the adjudication process.

Just tweeting it out there

Even as we were reporting that story, we were covering the meetings – or lack thereof – of the City Council, which were being scuttled by the absence of Johnson and Hedge-Morrell. Sitting in the council chambers Wednesday morning, looking at their empty chairs, I wondered where they were. One person on Twitter suggested we offer a prize for a photo of them taken somewhere that day.

I decided we should request the council members’ calendars for a couple of weeks to see what they were doing. And in a new-media moment of openness, I tweeted out a note to The Gambit, asking whether we should flip for it or both file the request. They wrote back that we should all do it. We were too busy to pursue the request, but the increasingly aggressive reporters at our alternative weekly publication took it on. They produced this story about how the two met with Mayor Mitch Landrieu the day before they weren’t able to attend the meeting.

Wonder what they talked about?

Mea culpa

While we’re on the subject, I want to publicly apologize to Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni. In our reporting on that meeting, and the mayor’s subsequent response to it, my interpretation of his statement mistakenly got into print. Neither the mayor nor Berni were making a judgment about Council President Jackie Clarkson. We were wrong, and it was my fault.

We quickly moved to correct the reporting after Berni pointed it out. You’ve probably noted that it’s not our policy to simply make our mistakes go away. As is common in other online publications with high standards, we strike the incorrect copy, underline the additions and add a note to succinctly explain the changes.

We’re an organization dedicated to educating the public while advocating for transparency, honesty and accountability. We want to hold ourselves to those standards, too, and we hope this correction policy serves that end.

Our new look

Thanks to the many readers who have emailed me, tweeted or commented on Facebook about our redesign. Your comments have been largely positive, and we’ve talked with our designers about some of the things you’ve said are a bit hard to read.

It was pure coincidence that our redesign came out very near the new setups at nola.com and WDSU-TV. At least we didn’t go with an eye-searing yellow.

We wish the best to our former engagement editor, Maggie Calmes, who has moved to nola.com to help that site with its social-media work. When she’s not busy tweeting or making things happen on Facebook or Tumblr, she’s helping to promote New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling. Maggie’s the exuberant one second from left in the photo with this recent TP story on the topic, which catches up with this December story in the British newspaper The Guardian, which was written by former Lens staffer Matt Davis.

In a part of the Lower 9^th Ward largely unrevived since flood waters filled the neighborhood, a lone two-story house stands on a block punctuated by overgown lots, piles of tiles and old concrete slabs.

Windows are broken. Graffiti covers the garage door. A kicked-in front door leads to a debris-filled interior. But what sets this property apart from other post-Katrina wrecks is both its high-profile owner and the substantial chunk of taxpayer dollars allocated to renovate it.

Click here for coverage of this story from our reporting partners at FOX8-TV.

City Councilman Jon Johnson owns the property on Deslonde Street, in District E, the area of the city he represents. According to conveyance records, Johnson has been awarded $166,000 under the state’s Small Rental Program. The money is called a loan but carries no interest and, according to the Small Rental Program website, the loan is forgiven “once the units are repaired and income-eligible tenants are indentified.”

Johnson signed the loan documents on July 26, 2011. The program allows an applicant nine months to complete the work, meaning that Johnson stood to forfeit the money as of three weeks ago.

The program uses federal Community Development Block Grant money administered by the state to create more affordable housing while mitigating blight and abandonment.

Christina Stephens, spokeswoman for the state Office of Community Development, said that if construction is not complete within nine months “we send a team member to meet with the applicant to determine the progress and to determine what happens next. An applicant found to be working toward completion will be granted an additional three months. If the property remains unimproved, the state can foreclose on it.”

Although the state does not release information about the details of specific property transactions, Stephens said that typically at closing on a loan under the Small Rental Program, the applicant will get half of the amount. Another 30 percent is made available during the renovation, and the remaining 20 percent after completion.

In a phone interview with our reporting partners at FOX8-TV, Johnson said he’s done some work at the property, such as putting on a new roof, but that he’s been delayed by personal issues. Johnson’s wife died of cancer in September.

Lower 9th Ward activist Vanessa Gueringer said it's unfair that other properties have been cited for code violations while Johnson's property has not. Photo by Karen Gadbois

The roof does appear to be new, but according to the city permitting database, the last building permit issued for that address was in 2007.

Johnson insisted the property is not blighted. The windows are not broken; they are left open during the day and then closed at night, he said. He said he makes a point of keeping the grass cut.

Though he’s used the Deslonde address for various business ventures he’s been involved with, Johnson does not live at that address. His home is in the gated Eastover subdivision, a property valued by the assessor at $686,000.

Lower 9th Ward resident and community activist Vanessa Gueringer contends that Johnson is the beneficiary of special treatment by city officials responsible for housing-code enforcement.

“Why are tax-paying citizens of this community – who are struggling with quality-of-life issues every day – being cited by code enforcement, in some cases $500 a day, and our councilperson is getting a free pass?”

The house sends a message, Gueringer said.

“It says our councilman has perks. …It says that the city looks the other way when our elected officials own blighted properties in our neighborhood.”

Other houses near the Johnson’s property have been cited and brought to adjudication in the past several month. But until The Lens asked, 2221-23 Deslonde St. had not been inspected since 2010, city spokesman Ryan Berni said.

Update: The city has responded.

On Monday, four days after we asked about the property, it was inspected and found wanting. “The property will be cited and moved towards administrative hearing,” Berni wrote Thursday night by email.

City records examined briefly by The Lens show that, in fact, the property was inspected on May 14, four days after The Lens first asked about the property. We couldn’t determine the results of that inspection, however, and Berni didn’t immediately respond to clarify the inspection dates.

It’s not the first time Johnson has been associated with still-struggling property. In January 2011, The Lens reported on various derelict properties owned by a local non-profit connected to the council member, including one directly across Deslonde Street from the one now in question.

The advocates who wrote this report accuse Gov. Bobby Jindal of breaking his pledge to improve juvenile justice.

Advocates for young people slipping into the clutches of the criminal justice system took to the steps of the statehouse today and called on Governor Bobby Jindal to stop “backsliding” on his commitment to reform the state’s notorious juvenile justice system and instead support programs that favor rehabilitation over punishment.

In a report called What’s Really Up, Doc?”, representatives of two groups – Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana – expressed particular dissatisfaction with Mary Livers, Jindal’s 2008 appointee to run the state Office of Juvenile Justice.

“Despite claims of reform,” the report charges, “Louisiana is still operating under the traditional, punitive method of juvenile justice.”

Livers has a 30 year history in adult corrections, and “minimal experience in juvenile rehabilitation,” said the report, issued today at noon on the Capitol steps in Baton Rouge. In her three-plus years on the job, the report states,  “Louisiana’s juvenile justice system has experienced frightening trends of violence and neglect permeating through the secure care facilities that house Louisiana’s youth.”

Years before her appointment to the Office of Juvenile Justice, Livers worked at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and for Avalon Correctional Service in Oklahoma, a private firm that operates prisons and juvenile jails.

The report calls for a recommitment by the Office of Juvenile Justice to reforms enacted in 2003 that advocates say have been neglected. Among measures urged by the report:

• Full implementation of youth-justice reforms enacted in 2003.
• Better training for staff in youth-related issues.
• Create regional youth facilities.
• Emphasize community-based rehabilitation programs over incarceration.
• Build smaller dorms in youth facilities to decrease violence and increase staff interaction.
• Improve programming in facilities around the state.
• Greater parental involvement with more direct action from the state to bring parents into the program.

The report reminds state leaders that in 2003 Louisiana passed “sweeping juvenile justice reform legislation that committed the state to a more therapeutic model of juvenile rehabilitation.”

Those reforms came about only after recognition that, as the report states, “the state’s youth prison system was one of the most brutal in the nation.” They followed a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against Louisiana over unconstitutional conditions at youth facilities and “well-publicized violence in the facilities,” the report states.

The resulting legislation, Act 1225, committed the state to reforms modeled on Missouri’s well-regarded youth justice program.

The “Louisiana Model” that emerged closely tracked the Office of Juvenile Justice’s Louisiana Children’s Code, which was “crafted with the idea that adjudicated youth are not placed in OJJ’s custody for the purposes of punishment, or to be segregated from society; rather, they are placed in OJJ’s custody for the sole purpose of rehabilitation and treatment,” the report said.

The year Louisiana enacted the reforms, Oklahoma’s Office of Juvenile Affairs terminated the prison management contract with the firm for which Livers worked.   One reason cited for the cancelation was the poor quality of education programs Avalon offered to youth, according to a report issued by the Oklahoma Public Employees Association, an opponent of prison privatization.

The youth advocacy groups accuse Jindal of backsliding on commitments to invest in a continuum of services for youth and instead refocusing on incarceration as the principal response to youthful offenders. “It is of great concern that just a decade ago Louisiana was making national headlines about problems in juvenile justice,” said Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project.

“The problems and the violence in the youth facilities has increased” in recent years, Kaplan said, “and there will be serious consequences if there is not real investment in youth services – and greater leadership.”

The American Correctional Association has reported that it costs between $66,000 and $88,000 to incarcerate a youth for between nine and 12 months, far more than the state’s per student allocation for public education.

Kaplan and others have mounted a concerted effort to address the notorious “school to prison pipeline” whereby suspensions and expulsions for minor infractions can lead to criminal offenses and eventual incarceraton. Youth advocates have pushed for school- and community-based programs that divert youthful offenders from prison.

The pro-youth pushback – one wag has dubbed it “No Child Left Behind Bars” – is being undermined by the Jindal adminstration’s enthusiastic prison privatization schemes and further cuts in community-based services  - not to mention the absence of ongoing federal oversight of the Office of Juvenile Justice, Kaplan contends.

Part of the 2003 federal settlement required the state to fully fund health care services for youthful offenders, but the agreement expired around 2005, Kaplan said. Jindal ended a contract with Louisiana State University that was providing state-run health care services to youthful offenders and turned it over to private providers.

Over time, Jindal has “consolidated OJJ services with the State Police, slashed funding for community-based services, privatized healthcare in the facility, and cut vocational programming for youth,” the report says.

The Office of Juvenile Justice operates four youth facilities in Louisiana: Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe; the Jetson Center for Youth near Baton Rouge; and the Bridge City Center for Youth near New Orleans. Its website claims to “serve youth in the community who are not involved in our system,” through community services programs at a dozen locations around the state.

The Lens sent a copy of the report to the Office of Juvenile Justice for comment, after the office declined to comment on its contents without first reading it.

A response was not immediately forthcoming.

After reviewing the report, in an email to The Lens the Office of Juvenile Justice defended its performance under Livers, saying it is “completely dedicated to reform of the juvenile justice system in Louisiana.”

“Current data show that our recidivism rates have fallen in all areas (secure care, non-secure, probation field services) and violent incidents have decreased in our secure facilities,” the statement said, adding that the office “has made remarkable progress toward systemic reform, in a short period of time …”

As usual, it didn't take long for the underground political commenters to get in gear and produce this image, which is making the rounds in cyberspace. It was circulating within hours of Wednesday's non-meeting of the council.

More reporters than City Council members attended today’s non-meeting of the city’s legislative branch, which again was stymied by the absence of Jon Johnson and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell.

Because the seven-member council has one open seat, the lack of two members means the council could not achieve the required five-member quorum.

After the roll call, the council clerk declared that city business could not be conducted. This follows a similar situation at Wednesday’s special meeting.

The council heard some reports today nonetheless, and members took the opportunity to throw more barbs at their missing colleagues.

Initially, reports were that the no-shows were upset about the handling of a proposed change to the election process of the council’s at-large positions. But it has increasingly become clear that the real concern is a perceived imbalance of power with Councilwoman Stacy Head’s appointee Errol George poised to take her seat.

Head moved from the District B seat to an at-large position two weeks ago, creating the vacancy in her former position. Since then, the council hasn’t had enough members to even consider a vote on George’s appointment. Any appointee would be interim, serving the remainder of Head’s term and by law be banned from running for election to a full term.

George and his supporters were in chambers today.

Dana Henry said of his friend: “Errol has more integrity than anyone I have ever met.”

Henry went on to say that he found the behavior of the missing council representatives “embarrassing.”

Councilwoman Kristen Gisleson Palmer alluded to rumors that Mayor Mitch Landrieu was exerting influence on the decision as to who should take Head’s seat.

“If the intent of this is to let the mayor appoint, I ask the mayor to respect our decision.”

If the council doesn’t appoint an interim member within 30 days of the vacancy, the privilege falls to Landrieu. That deadline is June 1. The council has no meetings scheduled before then.

Johnson and Hedge-Morrell left a May 3 meeting before the council could consider George’s appointment. Even though the council couldn’t take any binding action, the remaining four members went on to take a unanimous vote in favor of appointing George to the position.

Those same four members attending today’s meeting – Head, Gisleson Palmer, Susan Guidry and President Jackie Clarkson – were not happy with the continuing stalemate and inability to get work done.

“We are not always going to win, but picking up our toys and walking off is not going to work,” Guidry said pointedly.

Clarkson was equally sharp.

“This should be unacceptable to the people.”

Head pointed out that other interim appointments in the past weren’t universally supported by the council members but that those candidates went forward with the full vote of the council.

“I would have hoped that I would have been shown the same respect,” she said.

And with that the meeting came to a close with a few confused residents wandering the chambers, wondering why their land-use matters had not and would not be heard.

Scuttlebutt in the chambers is that Landrieu is looking to install former state Rep. Diana Bajoie in Head’s former seat.

Bajoie also was a favorite of the mayor to fill the seat that Arnie Fielkow vacated, a position that went to longtime City Council staffer Eric Granderson. Head replaced Granderson May 2.

The next meeting  – whenever that might be – ought to be a long one.

Undoubtedly, a major source of the turmoil was the unwavering antics of longtime gadfly Sandra Wheeler Hester, who was a key antagonist of the School Board pre-Katrina, and who has begun attending monthly meetings again. Hester and a group of four other henchwomen, which included Lower 9^th Ward activist Vanessa Gueringer, talked above every speaker who addressed the board and interrupted board members repeatedly while they discussed and voted on issues. Hester filled out a comment card for every agenda item, as she’s been known to do, and used her time to personally berate board members and audience members who spoke out against her.

Longtime School Board critic plays to the crowd as she takes to the rostrum Tuesday night. Photo by Jessica Williams.

But in another explosive turn of events, the seven-member board broke into a shouting match over who should be the interim superintendent, and a quieter, but no less argumentative, disagreement on the appointment of the deputy superintendent of charter schools. A five-member majority voted to appoint Chief Financial Officer Stan Smith as superintendent. But members Ira Thomas and Cynthia Cade vehemently spoke out against Smith’s appointment, with Cade nominating 10 other people.

Among those she wanted for the spot: Executive Director of Human Resources Armand Devezin and Executive Director of Exceptional Children’s Services Rosalynne Dennis, both of whom Thomas said last week he’d nominate.

Cade and Thomas both said that Smith, while qualified to serve in a financial capacity, did not have the credentials to be superintendent. They also said that the board’s majority made the decision to appoint Smith behind closed doors, and they  denounced board President Thomas Robichaux’s decision to go public with his intent for Smith to take the position prior to the board meeting.

In the case of the deputy superintendent, Brett Bonin rejoined Cade and Thomas in what has become their traditional alliance to vote against the creation of the deputy superintendent of charter schools, the appointment of the district’s Executive Director of Charter Schools Kathleen Padian to the position, and to set Padian’s annual salary at $145,000.

Dissension among board members seemed to encourage Hester and a few like-minded audience members. After Thomas and Cade’s argument with other board members, Hester and her cohorts began insulting board members by using obscenities and personal attacks. The jeering continued after adjournment, as at least two of the five loudest audience members followed board members Lourdes Moran, Seth Bloom, and chief financial officer Smith out, screaming insults and expletives just steps away from them.

Vice-president Lourdes Moran, who has served on the board since 2005, said Tuesday’s meeting was the most disruptive she’s seen.

“It’s as bad as I’ve ever experienced,” she said. “The worst part is that it goes against us because….people don’t want this type of performance, and the chances of us getting back our schools, they make that worse,” Moran said, gesturing towards the jeering audience members behind her after the meeting.

She said the board does have two security officers, but that “they just aren’t doing what we need them to be doing.”

Hester repeatedly scoffed at the board’s security force throughout the meeting, saying more than once that she dared anyone to remove her. She received her fair share of criticism from audience members and the board for her behavior.

It didn’t deter Hester, who’s come to be known as “18 Wheeler” by her critics and supporters. She kept talking over speakers.

And in the battle between School Board members over the appointment of the two positions, Cade took a page from Hester’s book as she talked over board president Thomas Robichaux, and told him he was out of order for refusing to consider the other 10 nominees for interim superintendent she proposed, and instead only voting on Smith’s appointment. Ignoring the president’s gavel banging, she and Thomas raised their voices in a heated dispute with Robichaux that culminated in Thomas walking out of the meeting, only to return minutes later.

“Stan Smith is not certified to be a superintendent,” Cade said to Robichaux. “If he can’t be a superintendent, he can’t be interim. He was hired to be a CFO.”

Cade, along with Thomas, said Robichaux shouldn’t have informed the media last week of his intent to place Smith in the position.

And when it came time to discuss Padian’s salary as deputy superintendent, Thomas alleged that the Orleans Parish School Board has systematically discriminated against its black employees by offering experienced black staffers less pay than white staffers with less experience. He then read aloud the salaries of the School Board’s executive staffers, comparing Padian and Smith’s proposed salaries and years of experience with that of those staffers. Both Cade and Thomas said the duties Padian would be performing as deputy superintendent were no different then the duties she’s performing as executive director.

Despite all this, the board managed to roll forward the millage, and get the two positions appointed. The tax rate for the board next year will be set at 45.31 mills, up from this year’s 43.6 mills. It means the board will take in an extra $5120 million, and have more to distribute to charter schools. Correction: The tax increase will raise just more than $5 million, not $120 million.

Several charter school leaders and proponents spoke out in support of the increase during the board’s hour-long public hearing, which was held prior to the meeting. Several other commenters spoke out against it, citing the School Board’s history of mismanagement of taxpayers’ dollars and clamoring for more accountability.

The board voted 5-2 in favor of the proposed millage increase, with Cade and Thomas opposed.

The increase brings the millage up to the total previously allowed by voters.

Council members kill time after the scheduled 9 a.m. start of their meeting this morning. Photo by Steve Beatty

Those present are concerned that city business, from the mundane to the important, will continue to be stalled if Council members Jon Johnson and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell don’t show up at tomorrow’s regularly scheduled meeting.

Council president Jackie Clarkson said Johnson called just before the scheduled 9 a.m. start to say he couldn’t make the meeting. She didn’t say whether he offered a reason. She said Hedge-Morrell called earlier in the morning to say that she wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be attending.

Clarkson said she hoped Hedge-Morrell would feel better soon. Her language quickly grew more pointed: she called the continuing lack of a quorum “disgraceful.”

Johnson and Hedge-Morrell walked out of a May 3 meeting after the six-member council split evenly on a measure that would have placed a charter amendment before the city’s voters. The two missing members were strident in their belief that the amendment – adjusting the way the city elects the council’s two at-large members – should be approved immediately.

Others wanted to send the measure through the committee process to work out details and explore possible additional changes in the selection of  at-large members.

Johnson and Hedge-Morrell have been no-shows at subsequent council meetings, saying they didn’t feel their colleagues were respecting them.  Neither appears pleased by new at-large member Stacy Head’s selection of urban planner Errol George as her interim replacement in the District B seat she gave up to run at-large. Their continued absence could influence the interim appointment and who makes it.

Head recently won an at-large run-off against former council member Cynthia Willard-Lewis and was sworn in May 2, leaving the seven-seat council short one member. Head’s district seat, representing Central City and Uptown, can’t be filled without at least five members present to vote on a temporary appointment.

That was just one item of business left hanging May3 when Johnson and Hedge-Morrell walked out.

Council members present on Wednesday – Head, Clarkson, Kristen Gisleson Palmer and Susan Guidry – ticked off a list of items that won’t move forward without at least five members tomorrow:

• approval of money to finance Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s just-announced plan to repair all street lights in the city by year’s end;
• approval of a resolution encouraging the state Legislature to keep the tolls on the Crescent City Connection, and
• approval of Harrah’s Casino-funded grants that benefit councilmember-selected community projects throughout the city.

“If we don’t have a quorum tomorrow, we don’t go on with the process of turning on the streetlights,” Clarkson said. “There is a lot of city business at stake that’s lying dormant, and that’s disgraceful.”

A Landrieu spokesman told our reporting partners at FOX8-TV that said Clarkson was just grandstanding about the street lights and that the program to repair broken lights is already moving forward. can roll forward without council approval. Correction: The communication from the mayor’s spokesman did not characterize any council member’s remarks.

George, Head’s nominee to succeed her as interim representative of District B, watched this morning’s meeting from the audience and took questions from council members from the rostrum.

He said he hoped the council could muster a quorum some day.

Obviously sympathetic, Head said, “ I know this is somewhat of an arduous process … I hope that it’s resolved very quickly.”

Clarkson assured George that his appointment would be on the agenda for tomorrow’s regular meeting.

But if, for lack of a quorum, the council can’t conduct business tomorrow and can’t make an appointment by June 1, Landrieu will gain the right to make the interim appointment. He endorsed Head’s opponent, Willard-Lewis, in the at-large race.

More straights are marching under the gay rights banner. credit: Creative Commons

In light of my last post on President Obama’s repositioning in support of gay-marriage rights, I found this recent GOP strategy memo fascinating. It’s from President George W. Bush’s 2004 pollster, Jan R. van Lohuizen. Within a few years of Bush’s re-election victory – after a campaign heavy with anti-gay-marriage tub-thumping, van Lohuizen crunched the numbers and recommended that Republicans consider the following (my emphasis):

Support for same sex marriage has been growing and in the last few years support has grown at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down.   A review of public polling shows that up to 2009 support for gay marriage increased at a rate of 1% a year.  Starting in 2010 the change in the level of support accelerated to 5% a year.

Again: this accelerating change in attitudes is the real political watershed, not Obama’s belated announcement in support of gay marriage. If van Lohuizen’s analysis is accurate, that means as many as 3 million voters will become significantly more accepting of gay marriage between now and election day. And many of those who “evolve,” as Obama did, will be swing voters in swing states. The economy will decide their vote more than any other issue, of course. But if it continues to improve slightly, voters who aren’t totally frustrated will review other issues before casting a vote. Thus Obama’s announcement broadened the campaign agenda by inserting the contentious gay marriage debate into the mix, and he’s on the side with momentum.

Earlier, I looked at the trouble this issue will cause the GOP, especially among its fundagelical supporters in southern states. For example, the 2008 Louisiana Republican Party platform reads:

We believe homosexuality should not be established as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle either in public education or in public policy. We do not believe public schools should be used to teach children that homosexuality is normal, and we do not believe that taxpayers should fund benefit plans for unmarried partners.
…
We oppose actions, such as “marriage” or the adoption of children by same-sex couples. We support the Defense of Marriage Act and support constitutional amendments to both the U.S. and the Louisiana Constitutions to ensure that marriage is limited to the union of one man and one woman.

If national attitudes are indeed trending towards gay marriage at a pace of 5 percent per year, it won’t take long before such views appear wildly out of step – not just with the nation, but with the national Republican Party.

But what about Louisiana’s Democratic politicians? We shouldn’t leave them unmentioned, even if they’ve become scarce in statewide offices. Don’t expect Senator Mary Landrieu to “evolve” on gay marriage any time soon. In fact, the issue might be a boon, because her opposition allows her to buck the national Democratic party (once again) in a way that will appeal to most Louisianians. For a long time I’ve assumed that this will be Sen. Landrieu’s last term. But if she decides to run for re-election, her continued opposition to gay marriage certainly won’t hurt her chances.

The situation for her brother, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is much more ticklish. As a leader of a city with a large gay population that regularly appeals to gay tourists (not to mention his being a Louisiana pol who is not afraid to identify himself as a liberal), Landrieu could come out for gay marriage with little political risk. Thus far he’s been quietly opposed. Maybe he just doesn’t believe in it, based on his religious convictions as a Catholic. Either way, an experienced operator like Landrieu understands that if he harbors any ambition to return to statewide office, announced support for gay marriage would be an immediate deal-killer.

The central question I keep returning to is this: what accounts for the dramatic change in national attitudes on gay marriage in recent years? We’ve reached and passed a tipping point, but no one can explain precisely why. In less than a decade’s time, we’re seeing two presidents (Bush and Obama) use different sides of an issue – marriage! –  in bids for re-election.

Simple demographics can’t explain the trend. It’s true that most people who die today are against gay marriage, while most of those registering to vote these days are for it (or at least not bothered by it). But that can’t explain the acceleration in the poll numbers. Did popular culture bring us here –  New Orleans’ own Ellen Degeneres and popular sitcoms like ABC’s “Modern Family”? Or is our liberalized attitude just a cumulative effect of the straight community having more contact with “out” gay couples who, like them, just strive to form loving families and raise well-adjusted kids?

Tell me what you think.

The board of trustees for the Algiers Charter School Association met Monday night to discuss their chief executive officer’s departure – but it didn’t notify the news media of the meeting and they held it at a private office building in the Central Business District.

Shortly after the meeting began, the association posted an item on its website revealing that its chief executive officer was not seeking a contract extension or renewal past the  June 30 expiration. The notice also said the board knew about the impending departure of CEO Andrea Thomas Reynolds since Feb. 28. Correction: The purpose of the meeting wasn’t made clear on the board’s agenda or in an interview with the board spokesman afterward, as The Lens reported earlier. 

Although the organization posted an agenda for the specially called meeting on its website Friday, it didn’t send The Lens a notification, despite our long-standing request for all such meeting notices. State law demands that public bodies give written, mailed notice of meetings to any member of the news media who asks for it at least 24 hours in advance.

A spokesman for the charter network agreed to send notifications to The Lens in the future, but he said they aren’t required to send mailed notice.

The board meeting was held at the Entergy New Orleans office on Perdido Street, an unusual venue change. Normally, board meetings are held at one of the eight West Bank schools the charter network governs, rather than across the river. While nothing in state open-meetings law forbids a public body from gathering and discussing public business at a private venue, the law does say that “public business (should) be performed in an open and public matter,” and that toward that end, the provisions of the chapter should be construed liberally.

Board member Charles Rice is the chief executive officer of Entergy.

Board Chairwoman Cassandra Bookman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Network spokesman David Jackson insisted that the network isn’t obligated to send a mailed notice.

“Normally we interpret (the law) to mean we have to make it available for the public,” he said Tuesday. “We post it at the place where the meeting is going to be held and on the website. I can do it as a courtesy but am not legally bound to give an advance copy.”

Jackson said the meeting notice was posted outside the Entergy building.

Of course, if the public doesn’t know where the board is meeting, posting the notice there does little good.

The Louisiana open meetings law (La. R.S. 42:19) is clear on the fact that public bodies, such as the Algiers group, must give such notice:

•  (1)(b)(i) All public bodies, except the legislature and its committees and subcommittees, shall give written public notice of any regular, special, or rescheduled meeting no later than twenty-four hours before the meeting.
• (2)  Written public notice given by all public bodies, except the legislature and its committees and subcommittees, shall include, but need not be limited to:
• (a)  Posting a copy of the notice at the principal office of the public body holding the meeting, or if no such office exists, at the building in which the meeting is to be held; or by publication of the notice in an official journal of the public body no less than twenty-four hours before the meeting
• (b)  Mailing a copy of the notice to any member of the news media who requests notice of such meetings; any such member of the news media shall be given notice of all meetings in the same manner as is given to members of the public body.

A year after we first ran a story highlighting charter schools’ obligation to comply with open-meetings law requirements, about half of the 45 charter school boards in New Orleans regularly sent us meeting notices. That number’s dwindled in the months since our Charter School Reporting Corps was formed. Only three of 42 boards that met last month sent us advanced meeting notices, instead counting on our reporters to hear through word of mouth about a meeting date change or special-called meeting.

Charter school boards failure to comply with open-meetings law has drawn critics both locally and statewide. Louisiana Public Charter School Association executive director Caroline Roemer Shirley has called charters’ failure to adhere to state law “upsetting,” and said that charters are expected to do better than traditional school systems of days past have done in regards to transparency.

Orleans Parish School Board vice president Lourdes Moran said that the Algiers’ charter group’s meeting at a private venue, as well as their failure to properly notice it, “is a problem.”

Andrea Thomas-Reynolds

“That’s a huge problem because they’re not running private schools. They’re running public schools with public dollars, and they should have noticed correctly,” she said Tuesday. “And in particular if your CEO is stepping down, (that meeting) should have be in the area that your school is in.”

The meeting’s agenda was sparse at best – other than an announcement of an executive session to discuss personnel issues, no discussion or action items were listed. Jackson confirmed Tuesday that the meeting was to discuss the departure of CEO Andrea Thomas-Reynolds. State law allows public bodies discussing issues relating to a person’s employment to hold closed sessions. Correction: Jackson did not confirm the subject of the executive session discussion. 

Reynolds’ confirmed her departure late Monday, saying that she felt her assignment with the Algiers group “is largely complete.” She’d been working with the board on a transition plan since February, but she hadn’t announced officially until Tuesday that she wouldn’t seek to renew her contract.

While Orleans Parish School Board President Thomas Robichaux has made his pick for the system’s interim superintendent clear, at least one board member disagrees and plans on offering other candidates.

Thomas

Robichaux said Thursday night that he’s going to nominate Stan Smith, the district’s chief financial officer, to temporarily fill the position of Superintendent Darryl Kilbert, who’ll step down in June. Robichaux informed several members of the media of his intent late Thursday, but he did not discuss it during the board’s public committee meeting.

The lack of discussion about the issue is what’s got another board member, Ira Thomas, peeved.

Thomas said he hadn’t been informed of Robichaux’s intent, and for him to publicly announce Smith’s placement as if was a done deal is part of a systematic effort to shut him and two other board members, Cynthia Cade and Brett Bonin, out of the board’s decisions. Thomas also said he’ll nominate at least two other names for the spot on Tuesday.

“This is just another example of the white faction of this board deciding issues without including the other three members of the board, myself, Ms. Cade and Brett Bonin,” he said.

The faction he mentions includes Woody Koppel, Seth Bloom, and Robichaux, who are all white, and Lourdes Moran, who is Hispanic. Bonin, is white and Cade is black.

“I know as of my leaving that meeting yesterday, and you saw when I left, there was no mention of anyone filling in that leadership position, Thomas said. “For Mr. Robichaux to go public with this, without mentioning it to the other members of the board, it’s just another example of their intent of keeping myself out of important decisions.”

Thomas didn’t dispute that Smith, 66, has performed well during his time as chief financial officer.

“He’s done a great job because that’s his field,” he said.

But he said that other candidates with a more solid background in education would be better for the top spot. Rosalynne Dennis, who serves as the district’s executive director of exceptional children’s services, has already filled in for Kilbert when he was on sick leave, as well as on a number of other occasions, Thomas said. Dennis, appointed under former superintendent Al Davis, has held her current position for the last 12 years, and served as the system’s director of special education before that.

Executive director of human resources Armand Devezin, who also served under Davis as an interim deputy superintendent, is another one of Thomas’ choices.

He said he’d bring up both names at the full board meeting on Tuesday.

Smith said Thursday that he’d be willing to help in the transition, but that his intent for the future is to retire.

The board is expected to vote on the interim superintendent appointment as well as the appointment of Kathleen Padian, current executive director of charter schools, to the deputy superintendent of charter schools position on Tuesday.