Louisiana Voice

LouisianaVoice heads into its final week of our October fundraiser and you may have noticed I haven’t badgered you as much this time. Postings in which I shamelessly begged for money have been sporadic for two reasons: (1) I abhor coming to my readers with my hand out. I rejected advice from a wise lobbyist years ago to make LouisianaVoice a paid subscription blog because I wanted everyone to have unfettered access to what I cover. (2) We’ve actually almost reached our goal for this cycle.

Almost.

Truth is, our readers have been more than generous and we appreciate that more than we could ever adequately express. But we do still have expenses and we like to have funds to cover them. Gasoline is higher now and the cost is rising. I am involved as a plaintiff in a couple of litigation cases over public records (which I expect to win either at the state court level or on appeal). That costs money and the document copies I have requested from every parish for a story I’m working on are going to cost a bundle. Thanks to you, we’re covered. For now.

But like there’s never too much pitching on a baseball team, there’s never quite enough money, it seems. I know that’s true in most of your own cases, as well. But if you can (and ONLY if you can comfortably), please help us by clicking on the yellow DONATE button in the column to the right of this post and give by credit card or mail a check to Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.

As always, thank you for your loyal support these past 11-plus years.

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The Bossier Parish Police Jury has descended into the abyss of totalitarian authority and it has done so with no prior notification, with no public comment, and most likely without even understanding he perilous magnitude of its actions.

By following the dangerous but inexplicably popular trend of making scapegoats of public libraries, the police jury is setting itself up as the moral police in much the same manner as the fascists did in Germany nearly a century ago.

Except it has never been about library content or book placement.

It’s all about power and control. Nothing else.

All this nonsense about protecting the minds of children is just that: nonsense. Misdirection. Lies. And it’s playing right into the hands of the fascists who, while screaming “socialism” and “communism,” are slowly and most assuredly chipping away at the very freedoms upon which this country was founded.

The growing battles over local libraries which began in Florida and quickly spread to other states have been popping up all over the state map: Lafayette Parish, Livingston Parish, and now Bossier Parish.

And in Bossier Parish, it seems, they don’t mind breaking a few state laws to achieve their goal.

Those who advocate clamping down on what libraries can offer are people with ulterior motives and their actions are not directed at the overall benefit of the populace. Instead, it is to perpetuate one thing and one thing only: control.

The first thing any totalitarian movement does do when setting out to grab power and establish control is to destroy access to public information.

Oh, to be sure, they think they’re patriots carrying out God’s wishes. But in their zeal, they are taking a page right out of the fascist playbook. And to paraphrase George Burns in the movie Oh God!, they stopped doing God’s wishes a long time ago.

Were it up to these neo culture police and their war on drag queen shows, Flip Wilson’s hilarious Geraldine character (“If you can fly 600 miles per hour in the dark and find Los Angeles, you can find my luggage”) would never make on TV today. Robin Williams would never have been allowed to play Mrs. Doubtfire.

But back to Bossier Parish and the shenanigans of the parish police jury, which, according to its legal counsel, does not have to adhere to established Louisiana ethics laws. Even the parish manager may also be in violation of a state residency statute.

Take the police jury’s Sept. 21 meeting, for example. The parish library was not on the agenda but that did not stop member Doug Rimmer, vice president of the library board of control, from reporting that two members of the library board would be removed so that they could be replaced by two members of…the police jury.

There was a provision for public comment, all right, but since that item wasn’t on the agenda, there was no way for the “public” to know of the impending action (much like when the Livingston Parish Police Jury allowed audience members to sign up to comment on its proposal to send a letter to the parish librarian and then passed the resolution without allowing comment).

As it stands right now, four of the five Bossier Parish Library Board members – Rimmer, Charles Gray, Glenn Benton, and Bob Brotherton – are also members of the police jury and the fifth member is expected to be replaced by a police jury member.

So, how does Louisiana’s dual office-holding law apply in such a case. According to R.S. 42:61-66, a person holding a local elective office (police jury) MAY HOLD A PART-TIME APPOINTIVE POSITION. But the law does not specifically address that elected official’s ability to appoint himself or to hold a part-time appointive position on a committee or commission governed directly by the elective body on which he serves.

That would be prohibited according to several opinions by the Louisiana attorney general’s office, though Bossier parish attorney Patrick Jackson dismissed those as basically just another attorney’s opinion.

The police jury decided to appoint themselves after declaring that it was difficult to find five people out of the parish’s 130,000 citizens willing to serve on the board despite one individual’s assertion that no fewer than five people actually submitted their personal resumes and letters of interest to the police jury – which the police jury promptly ignored.

Nor should it be ignored that the police jury members who were being considered for appointment to the library board participated in the discussion and voting and did not abstain as they should have, thus creating an obvious conflict of interest and ethics violation.

Nor should it go with mentioning that the police jury on Facebook solicited names for membership on several other boards – but not the library board.

When the parish library director resigned under duress from the police jury, parish manager Butch Ford was appointed interim director despite having zero experience in the area of library management (he’s an engineer) and does not even possess a library card and despite the library’s already having someone in place who was qualified and who could’ve assumed the duties.

Ford, by the way, resides in Caddo Parish in direct violation of R.S. 33:1236.1 which says that a parish manager and his or her assistant shall reside in and be a registered voter in the parish for which he/she is employed.

Finally, the police jury also:

• Decided to suspend the Bylaws for the Library Board of Control to write new ones, effective immediately
• Decided to rewrite all library policies (this includes the collection policy that protects the library from censorship attempts)
• Decided to potentially shorten library hours of operation
• Cut the library operating budget by $1 million

The problem with all those is that they were done in executive sessions held behind closed doors, a violation of Louisiana open meetings laws.

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A decade ago, Louisiana’s graduation rate for special education students stood at a dismal 28 percent. That was because Louisiana was one of only a handful of states that required students with disabilities to take the same standardized tests and to make the same scores as students without disabilities.

HOUSE BILL 1015 in the 2014 regular legislative session by then-Rep. John Schroeder and Sen. Dan Claitor and co-sponsored by literally dozens of legislators from both the House and Senate mandated that an exceptional student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) would provide an “alternative pathway” to promotion.

The bill would sail through both chambers and was signed into law as Act 833 but not before State Education Superintendent John White and State Director of Special Education Jamie Wong “did everything in their power” to kill the measure, including testifying themselves in opposition to the bill in Senate and House education committees and importing cronies from Washington, D.C., to testify against it, one source told LouisianaVoice.

As a result of passage and implementation of the act, the SPED graduation rate today stands near 70 percent and both White and Wong promptly moved to the front of the line to TAKE CREDIT for its success, that same person said.

As a reward for Wong’s efforts on behalf of Special Education, White in July 2018 conferred upon her the title of appointing authority “for all employees or positions in the Special School District, including the authority to remove or dismiss all employees, including classified employees who have attained permanent status, approve layoff and layoff avoidance measures for all employees, including classified employees who have attained permanent tatus and set hiring rates for unclassified executive positions.”

That was particularly grating to one person who said Wong was “unqualified to consult on anything in special education.”

Wong was first hired in July 2014 at $110,000 per year just about the time she and her husband were moving from Washington to Louisiana so that her husband could work in the upcoming gubernatorial campaign of US Sen. David Vitter.

She had previously served as the education policy legislative correspondent for former US Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Not too long after being given the hiring and firing authority at SSD, Wong began casting her eye at the superintendent’s position. She actively lobbied for the position but Dr. Ernest Garrett, III, was ultimately chosen in August 2019 only to fall victim to the typical Louisiana purge in July of this year when he was fired on the vague grounds of “payroll discrepancies,” becoming one of the first of a succession of firings and resignations that have rocked the Louisiana School for the Deaf.

But even before she pursued the job of SSD superintendent, Wong was hedging her bets by launching a special education consulting company – while still employed by the Department.

On Dec. 1, 2019, she left her position as director of special education and the very next day was named as an education program consultant for DOE at $46 per hour.

But a month earlier, on Nov. 5, she had registered her new special education consulting company, SPED STRAGEGIES, to contract with parish education systems statewide – even as she remained working for the Department of Education (DOE), an apparent conflict of interests and a potential ethics concern because of her individually contracting with local education districts while being simultaneously employed by DOE.

Moreover, in contracting with local school systems, Wong signed a sworn affidavit dated Oct. 27, 2021, claiming that SPED Strategies was a “sole source” provider of services because competition in providing special education collaborative services “is precluded by the existence of a patent, copyright, secret process, or monopoly.”

Designation as a sole source provider allows a vendor to circumvent the state bid requirements and to be awarded a contract for services or products without competitive bidding.

In an accompanying letter dated Nov. 1, 2021, Wong said, “SPED Strategies is the sole creator of the SPED analysis and progress monitoring tool and corresponding district coaching support. The methodology and training involved with this tool continues to evolve as we develop customized experiences for our partners. The tool provides school systems with critical information about the performance and progress of students with disabilities and strategies for improving outcomes.”

Jamie Kelly, supervisor of special education for the Sabine Parish School Board, also provided a Nov. 8, 2021, but which seemed to approach the sole source issue from a different perspective. In her letter she said SPED Strategies was the only company available to come to the parish and “provide direct services to the staff and hold parent meetings when needed.”

Not so, said a spokesman for a consulting firm that he said provides “the same and additional” services. “Many companies provide these services. I don’t see anything that is proprietary on their (SPED Strategies) website.

“Sole source is very difficult to achieve as a consulting firm,” he added. “Even the national consulting firms are not sole source.”

A month after Garrett was appointed superintendent of SSD, Wong resigned at DOE.

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Because we are extremely frugal in the control of expenses, LouisianaVoice is not one of those news services that requires thousands of dollars a week just to survive. That’s a lot of pressure.

We’re pretty much low-budget because we have to be. Though the plural “we” is used frequently in posts, it’s really an “I” operation. I am the sole proprietor and the only staff writer. I can’t be everywhere at once, though I try to be in as many places as possible.

Despite that, there are expenses. That’s why I come to you twice a year – October and April – to ask for your support. Occasionally, I’ll have a book offer that brings in a few bucks but basically, this is our only source of income.

Fortunately, we’re not too far from our goal of $2500 for this six-month period (that’s only about $400 a month), so please help with what you can if you like stories like the one above this.

I know it’s been tough coming off the pandemic shutdown only to plow head-on with runaway inflation, so I’m not asking you to give if you cannot afford it – only if you feel comfortable helping. If so, click on the big, oblong yellow DONATE button in the column to the right of this pathetic post and follow the directions to give by credit card. If you prefer, send a check to Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.

As always, I humbly thank you.

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In the fall of 2017, the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE), with a few discretionary dollars lying around, funded a 17-page study of findings and recommendations for the Louisiana School for the Deaf (LSD), the Louisiana School for the Vision Impaired (LSVI), and the Louisiana Special Education Center (LSEC), all of which are under the umbrella of the Special School District (SSD). The report by the Education Development Center was submitted on Marcy 5, 2018.

Today, 4½ years later, that report is gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, few of its proposals ever implemented. Morale, meanwhile, particularly at LSD, is at an all-time low as the school finds itself in a state of turmoil, and uncertainty.

Worst of all, no one at DOE seems to really care about anything but establishing some sort of political fiefdom at SSD and members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) are either oblivious to conditions or derelict in carrying out their duties. And if a sit-down with one BESE member is any indication, then dereliction may well be the applicable term.

DOE appears hell-bent on ridding itself of qualified personnel while replacing them with appointees with little or no credentials in educating hard-of-hearing or vision-impaired students – even to the point of installing LSD administrators with zero experience in sign language skills.

At the same time, LouisianaVoice has learned that a former DOE official was hired in 2014 after the department advertised her position only in a Washington, D.C. publication at the time she was residing in Washington. The position was not advertised in say, Baton Rouge, where the job was, and it just happened that at the time, she was preparing to move to Louisiana so that her husband could work in the gubernatorial campaign of then-US Sen. David Vitter. Sometimes the dots are so easy to connect that it’s almost laughable. Almost.

Moreover, that individual, State Special Education Director Jamie Wong, launched her own consulting company, SPED Strategies, and has obtained consulting contracts with several parish school systems without having to go through a bid process because she provided affidavits that falsely claimed that her company was a “sole source” provider of services she offered (more on that tomorrow).

Meanwhile, the purge of personnel qualified to work with deaf and hard-of-hearing students is in full swing and no one seems to fully comprehend why.

On July 25, Dr. Ernest Garrett, III, superintendent of Louisiana’s Special School District which oversees LSD, LSVI, AND LSEC, was fired by the SSD board from the position he had held for nearly three years.

Then, in quick succession, LSD Director Dr. Heather Laine and Gloria M. Ramos, one of only three speech-language pathologists who is fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) in Louisiana, were terminated. Actually, Ramos resigned as it appeared she was about to be shown the door. She has since been banned from the campus because on her way out, she paused with some of her students to say goodbye.

The reasons given for discipline and/or dismissal of all three were pretty much cookie-cutter justifications with no real specifics provided other than insubordination for Ramos’s expressed concern about taking on an excessive number of student cases which she feared would leave her exposed to legal liability, a position ridiculed by Garrett’s successor, acting superintendent Katherine Granier. For Garrett, the reason given was “payroll discrepancies and attendance issues,” again vague justifications which will, in all probability, invite legal action on Garrett’s part.

Jay Isch, executive director of Deaf Focus, said of Garrett’s termination, “He was absolutely sabotaged.”

“All these problems with the administration go to show how critical competent leadership at deaf schools is,” Isch continued. “These people do not understand. They continue to ignorantly and maybe inadvertently discriminate against deaf or hard of hearing members of the faculty. They do not understand how deaf schools should operate. Deaf schools also carry a lot of weight in being a beacon for deaf communities across the country. The school has a moral obligation to employ deaf and hard-of-hearing professionals to work with [these] children and sustain the economy of the ‘deaf ecosystem’ to ensure employment opportunities are there [them] rather than filling the campus with incompetent people who do not understand deaf education.”

Garrett, who is deaf and who possesses extensive experience in working with deaf students and who is proficient in signing, was replaced by Katherine Granier, who has no background in teaching deaf students and who is unable to communicate in ASL.

Granier has been rejecting new students because of staff shortages and then cutting staff positions based on the low number of enrolled students, one person with knowledge of the school told LouisianaVoice – even as available grand funds from the state have gone unutilized to fill the gaps.

“Grievances from multiple employees have been filed. Former employees have shared their experience at the district as recently as a few weeks ago, and it is horrendous,” Isch said. “The blatant discrimination against Deaf professionals and the abuse of power are appalling and I feel that the Louisiana Commission for the Deaf needs to step in to call out the administration for their inexpertise (sic), incompetency, and pettiness. We need to support the newly-appointed SSD Board in their navigation towards being knowledgeable and aware. As the Board of the district, they play a critical role in ensuring that the Louisiana School for the Deaf receives the support they need and the appropriate guidance from competent administrators to do so. 

“We feel the administration is taking advantage of the fact that the SSD Board is new and not aware. As an advocate, I have been personally involved in advocating for competent leadership at LSD for over 5 years, and we are going back to square one. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the assessment of the district, and the search/hiring of competent leadership. Now, they’re tearing all of that progress apart, taking us back to where we started. The administration is hiring incompetent people with no qualifying background, hiring people before the application period even concludes, and allowing them to run the school into the ground.”

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