Schools
Fact checking remarks from House hearing on Common Core standards | The Lens – The Lens’ Jessica Williams evaluates comments during yesterday’s hearing on Common Core standards. The House Committee later voted down bills that challenged Common Core, despite late support for them from Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office. Jindal, an early champion of Common Core, has apparently reversed course, perhaps in preparation for a run for president.
Franklin High School teachers hope to unionize; some teachers cite pay concerns | The Lens – A strong majority of faculty members petitioned for collective bargaining. Charter board president Duris Holmes was surprised by the development but did not oppose the idea of a union. Ben Franklin High would become the second New Orleans charter to officially recognize a teacher’s union. (For more on New Orleans’ charters, check out the Charter Schools page at The Lens.)
Algiers school group bids for as many as six charters in Baton Rouge and Shreveport areas | The Lens
[Algiers Charter Schools Association CEO Adrian] Morgan expects to know the result of each application between June and July. The new schools would open for the 2015-16 school year. He said the organization considered many areas in Louisiana but chose the Shreveport and Baton Rouge areas because they are the two largest metropolitan areas in the state after New Orleans.
Criminal Justice
Body cameras to record all NOPD public interactions | The New Orleans Advocate – Say cheese:
Superintendent Ronal Serpas touted the technology Wednesday as “the next step in American policing to ensure transparency and accountability,” saying the devices would remove the “he said, she said” from everyday police work.
To New Bethany and back: One woman’s journey to report the man she says sexually abused her | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – The beginning of a four-part series on a woman who says she was sexually abused 25 years ago at a religious girls’ home in North Louisiana.
Protests This Week Show Dissent on New Orleans Criminal Justice System | Justice Roars – “Organizers of an LGBT March and Rally Against Hate and Violence, scheduled for this Wednesday at 8 p.m., and Slutwalk New Orleans, scheduled for this Saturday at 10:30 a.m., have both advertised and embraced a police presence as part of their events, bringing criticism from other activists.”
Government & Politics
Live chat Thursday: Join us for an online conversation with J.P. Morrell | The Lens – The state senator supports Common Core standards, as well as the lawsuit against oil and gas companies.
Count Jindal unpersuaded: Repeal and replace Obamacare | USA TODAY – Gov. Bobby Jindal’s alternative to Obamacare, according to the article, urges more “state flexibility on Medicaid, expanded health savings accounts, additional price and quality disclosures by hospitals and other health care providers, and new limits on lawsuits.”
Environment
Live blog: Committee to pick new nominees for local levee board | The Lens – The nominating committee of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority — East is expected to renominate Tim Doody despite his support for the controversial lawsuit against 97 oil, gas and pipeline companies.
As Louisiana’s coast disappears, so does landowners’ money | Al Jazeera America – Napoleonic law allows the state to claim minerals underneath navigable bodies of water. Landowners say that when erosion turns coastal properties into open waterways, the state lays claim to oil royalties from those areas.
Diversion Compromise in the Works | LaPolitics
At the heart of the debate is $40 million worth of planning and design for projects that would divert sediment from the Mississippi River at strategic points using massive pipelines to dump it into the wetlands to mimic the process that creates marshland.
Commercial fishermen contend the projects would actually alter delicate salinity of the marshes, which would in turn damage surrounding habitats.
Drilling on the Mississippi Sound? | Gulf Latitudes – The state of Mississippi is proceeding with plans to open areas near barrier islands to drilling. Environmental groups urge the state to study the effects of drilling on coastal tourism. “Citing evidence that even a 3 percent reduction in tourism numbers along the coast would offset any potential gains from natural gas production, the coalition is gaining some allies.”
Louisiana Senate passes bill seeking to derail levee board suit | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – The bill would halt a suit against 97 oil and gas companies filed by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority — East. “After several efforts to amend Senate Bill 547 to soften its implications failed, state senators passed the legislation by a vote of 27-10. The bill now heads to the House for further debate.”
Land Use
In the Lower Ninth Ward, a Fight Over Height | The Atlantic Cities – National attention on a controversial high rise apartment development in Holy Cross. Last week urbanist Roberta Gratz wrote a widely-read Lens opinion piece against the proposal.
La. lawmakers considering New Orleans blight reduction bill | WWL-TV
[S]tate lawmakers are considering a bill that will give the city more enforcement power on nuisance, overgrown lots, and blight.
The proposed bill would also allow the city of New Orleans to pass along the clean-up tab to the owner of the blighted property.