Live chat: State Sen. Conrad Appel talks about Common Core, other bills

Join us at 1 p.m. Thursday.

State Sen. Conrad Appel will be online Thursday at 1 p.m. with Lens readers to discuss the controversial Common Core standards, other education matters and bills before the state Legislature.

Appel, R-Metairie, chairs the Senate Education Committee. In 2012, he played a key role in helping Gov. Bobby Jindal pass Acts 1, 2 and 3, which required greater accountability for schools and school districts, expanded Louisiana’s school voucher program statewide and established a master plan for early childhood education in Louisiana.

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers opposed Acts 1 and 2. It has succeeded in winning a court case against Act 1, which has been appealed, and a case involving Act 2 that has prevented Jindal from using public-education funds for the voucher program.

Appel has been a strong supporter of the Common Core education standards that Louisiana adopted in 2010. This year, teachers unions, some school

superintendents, conservative legislators and parents have tried to repeal Common Core or delay its implementation. Appel opposes those efforts.

Appel, 62, was elected in a special election in 2008 and was re-elected in 2011 with no opposition. He had never held elected office before.

His district includes the east bank of Jefferson Parish and a portion of Orleans Parish around Audubon Park.

Appel owns Construction South, a commercial construction company in Metairie with about 100 employees. He chaired the Port of New Orleans before he came to the state Senate. As a senator, he sponsored legislation that created the Louisiana International Commerce Board to attract business to the state.

Live chat

Tyler Bridges

Tyler Bridges covers Louisiana politics and public policy for The Lens. He returned to New Orleans in 2012 after spending the previous year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where he studied digital journalism. Prior to that, he spent 13 years as a reporter for the Miami Herald, where he was twice a member of Pulitzer Prize-winning teams while covering state government, the city of Miami and national politics. He also was a foreign correspondent based in South America. Before the Herald, he covered politics for seven years at The Times-Picayune. He is the author of The Rise of David Duke (1994) and Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards (2001). He can be reached at (504) 810-6222.