Louisiana Voice

It appears that LouisianaVoice may have caught Louisiana Superintendent John White in, well, a little White lie about changes to the Department of Education (DOE) website.

Apparently it’s not enough that our story last week on the emails linking DOE to the Gates Foundation, Rupert Murdoch and Fox News Network apparently triggered White’s dormant Tourette’s symptoms, but now we learn he wasn’t altogether truthful about his reasons for overhauling the department’s web page.

In a Feb. 5 story by Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Will Sentell about a rash of complaints about difficulties experienced in trying to navigate the new web page, White said the decision to revamp the web page was a response to complaints from parents and teachers.

Taking that as our cue, we submitted a public records request on Feb. 7, asking for the opportunity to “review the ‘complaints from parents and teachers’ as related to the decision to overhaul the Department of Education’s web page.”

Being of a naturally suspicious nature, our reasons for skepticism were twofold:

• One, given the spate of complaints about the new page, we felt the website was redesigned as a deliberate effort to conceal DOE data from the public because those data did not support public claims by White and his boss, Gov. Bobby Jindal;

• Two, we just flat out did not believe White’s claim of “complaints from parents and teachers” about the old website.

On Feb. 19, we received a printout of complaints as a result of our request—12 days after our request and nine days late under the three-day deadline provided by state law.

What’s more, it was the wrong list. It was a printout of a half-dozen complaints—about the new website. And they weren’t complimentary. Here is a sampling:

• I am very concerned about the usability of the new website. As a network support person, I have sent many links to teachers to access resources on the DOE website, or encouraged them to use the old search box which would nearly always direct you to the appropriate link. Now if I type in any term into the search box, whether it’s GLEs or Transitional Writing Prompts, it yields zero results. I am very worried that teachers are no longer going to have access to materials they rely on every day for planning aligned lessons. Is it possible to wait to make the changeover until after testing?

• This website is very frustrating to use. I am unable to locate information that I need to do my job. How do you access handbooks and policies? How do you access LAA 1 training materials? How do you access transition information regarding special needs students who are in high school? We can no longer talk to a human being by phone or email. We are no longer provided trainings and inservices to keep up with the changes that are in place. If we no longer have a website that is user friendly, what are we expected to do?

• Your newly designed website sucks…and not in a good way. For example, if I typed in “Bulletin 1508,” I get something about gifted students, “Excerpt from bulletin 1508 about Gifted and Talented.” Please correct this and make this professional, not juvenile. I could hardly find anything easily. I finally found Bulletin 1508 in your BESE category. And correct this misspelling: “Opt In: would you like to ‘recieve’ our ED CONNECT newsletter?” For crying out loud, USE YOUR SPELLCHECKER!

• Many of your links lead to 404 errors. Come on, man! “Charter Schools” links to error page. Get rid of this juvenile site; you represent the State of Louisiana!

• I’m having a lot of trouble trying to locate the web site where I can get an application for Jefferson Parish voucher program. Please help!!!!

Make no mistake, we were tickled to receive these complaints, but they were not what we requested.

We responded that same day, Feb. 19, with a reminder that DOE had sent us the incorrect response:

• Mr. White, my request was for copies of complaints about the former DOE web page. You stated publicly that the new format was chosen because of “many complaints” you received about the old web page design. It is those complaints about the former web page that I am seeking. Please provide those as well by the close of business on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013.

The following day, Feb. 20, we received an acknowledgement from DOE that the wrong information had indeed been sent:

• You are correct that the responses that were sent were not responsive to your request…Please allow (DOE) to respond to your request by Friday, Feb. 22, 2013.

Well, Friday, Feb. 22 came and went. No response. Then Monday, Feb. 25 and still no response. We sent a gentle reminder and copied our legal counsel, J. Arthur Smith.

Finally, on Thursday, Feb. 28, we received the following message:

• Through this letter, please be informed that the Department is not in possession of any public records responsive to your request.

Whoa. Wait, What? No records responsive to our request?

But, but…how could that be? It was White himself who said, “We cleaned up the mess” when the website was redesigned pursuant to all those “complaints from parents and teachers.”

Dude. You may need to be recharged.