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Archive for the ‘BESE’ Category

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in BESE, Education, Ethics, Notable Quotables, Public Records, Transparency on July 4, 2012| 3 Comments »

“I think that John White is still lying. He is in full CYA mode and assumes that he will simply be able to BS his way out of the contradiction the Monroe News-Star has caught him in. After all, it’s a method that has worked perfectly well for him ever since he arrived in Louisiana.”

–Comment by a Times-Picayune reader in response to State Education Superintendent John White’s contention that there was “nothing inappropriate” about his email to members of Gov. Piyush Jindal’s staff in which he outlined his plan for “muddying up the narrative” of reporters who exposed a Ruston school with no accommodations but which was approved for 315 voucher/scholarships.

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White shifts into Emailgate damage control mode; ‘Nothing inappropriate,’ and Loch Ness monster proves Creationism

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records on July 4, 2012| 6 Comments »

As State Education Superintendent John White shifts into a damage control mode, his explanations of Emailgate have taken on a bizarre tone reminiscent of the man, who when his wife catches him cheating with another woman, asks, “Are you going to believe your eyes or what I tell you?”

Or perhaps the attorney who is sued because his dog, allowed to run loose, bites a neighbor: “He must have been provoked because my dog doesn’t bite. Besides, he is never allowed out of my fenced yard. Anyway, I don’t own a dog.”

White’s explanations are about that plausible.

White, in emails to the obviously complicit strategists for Gov. Piyush Jindal on the eve of his confirmation hearing in the final days of the recently completed legislative session, laid out his plan to diffuse criticism of his department’s lack of oversight in awarding voucher/scholarships. No one in Jindal’s office attempted to rein him in.

At the center of the controversy was the approval of 315 vouchers for New Living Word in Ruston, a facility lacking in classrooms, textbooks and teaching staff.

School principal, the Rev. Jerry Baldwin, said the school teaches primarily by DVDs and even though he lacked accommodations for the 315 students, he was moving ahead “on faith.”

White’s misdirection ploy began with the emails to Jindal Communications Director Kyle Plotkin and the governor’s policy adviser Stafford Palmieri and continued several weeks later with a Department of Education (DOE) response to a public records request from LouisianaVoice. That response was sent by DOE public information officer Sarah Mulhearn:

“In your email dated June 25, 2012, you asked, ‘Do you have a date when the Department of Education originally approved New Living Word in Ruston for 315 vouchers?’ The specific information you requested is not available, because final seat numbers have not yet been decided. No school, including New Living Word, has been approved for any definite number of vouchers/scholarships. The 315 is only the number requested by the school.”

A form letter sent out by the department to schools dated May 18 (well before White’s confirmation hearing and his email to Plotkin and Palmieri), however, would seem to suggest otherwise:

“Congratulations on being accepted into the Louisiana State Scholarship Program!” the letter began. “We hope that you are excited to be part of this program, and we look forward to working closely with you in service to the students of Louisiana. Now that you are officially (emphasis added) part of the Scholarship program, we’d like to take a few moments to introduce the next steps in this process.

“Before May 22, you may immediately begin to market yourself to potential students! Feel free to get creative and help spread the word about the available scholarship seats at your school. Also, please note that the Department will contact you soon to detail which fees administered by your school will be covered by the scholarship allocation. As a participating school, you will be the primary ‘on the ground’ point of contact for interested students and their families.

“In addition, we would like to post information about your school on our website for interested students and families.

“Starting on May 22, student applications will be made available to you and posted on the Louisiana Department of Education website. Students will have until June 29 to submit an application. We ask that you make physical copies available at your school or in your community for students and families interested in submitting an application to your school.

“On May 21 and 22, the Department of Education will host webinars that will walk you through the process of accepting an application, verifying student eligibility and entering the application into the Department of Education online data system.

“…The Department of Education will run the lottery process for all students in mid-July. We will provide your school with a list of all of the students who will receive an offer to your school, along with their contact information. At that point, we’re requesting that you reach out to these students, confirm their eligibility once again, and enroll them as soon as possible.”

None of this lends evidence to White’s contention during his confirmation hearing that the department was approving only “preliminary” acceptances in its letters to the schools.

Yet, White said in his email to the governor’s office that he planned to “take some air out of the room on the floor tomorrow…” and that he would “like to create (emphasis added) a news story about ‘the next phase’ of determining seats in schools…” He also said his planned strategy “would allow us to talk through the process with the media, muddying up a narrative they’re trying to keep black and white.”

The emails revealed White’s plans for deliberate duplicity, a concerted effort to mislead a legislative committee poised to determine whether or not he would be confirmed for his position, as well as the media and the public. Yet, after news of the email message broke in the Monroe News-Star, he attempted to defend them by saying there was “nothing inappropriate” about the emails.

He insisted that DOE has planned all along to take a closer look at private schools accepting large numbers of voucher students. He said his note to Plotkin and Palmieri referred only to the timing of making public the next step in the process.

The letter, however, which makes no mention of any additional steps in the approval process, went out to 115 schools, most of them church affiliated, that have been approved for nearly 5,000 vouchers.

Besides the New Living Word School in Ruston, there also is the BeauVer Christian School in Beauregard Parish whose owner was sentenced to four years probation and ordered not to conduct any financial transactions on behalf of the school. That school was approved for 119 vouchers.

Then there is Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake in Calcasieu Parish, approved for 135 vouchers. That school, to support its teaching that the earth is only 6,000 years old, uses textbooks that portray the fictional Loch Ness monster as a real, modern-day dinosaur as some sort of convoluted means of debunking evolution.

Such is the nature of Piyush Jindal’s education reform in the only state in the U.S. where florists must be licensed but there are no accountability standards for charter schools and no certification requirements for charter school teachers.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in BESE, Education, Notable Quotables, Transparency, Vouchers on July 2, 2012| 2 Comments »

“I know that the administration was not prepared to answer questions and the answers they gave were not forthcoming about the voucher program.”

–State Sen. Ed Murray (D-New Orleans), on hearing of State Education Superintendent John White’s emailed plans to baffle the legislature with B.S. over the issue of the department’s approval of 315 vouchers for a Ruston school that has no classroom space, desks, teachers or books to accommodate the additional students.

“Timmy Teepell joins OnMessage as a partner and head of our new Southern Office.”

–Press release last Oct. 24 on the appointment of Timmy Teepell as a partner and head of OnMessage’s non-existent Southern office in Baton Rouge.

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Where’s Timmy? New game in town is finding OnMessage’s office address, phone number; maybe Capitol’s Fourth Floor?

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Transparency, Vouchers on July 2, 2012| 6 Comments »

THE PIYUSH JINDAL ADMINISTRATION: where transparency and accountability go to die.

The Monroe News-Star did an excellent job of demonstrating just how far this administration will go to keep legislators and the public in the dark about the governor’s political agenda.

But there are other examples—some of which we have written about here and another that we are writing about today—that reveal an ominous trend of this administration to rule by intimidation and secrecy—a dangerous combination at any level of government. The latest issue might well be the actual status of Jindal’s former Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell, now ostensibly a partner and head of OnMessage Inc.’s Southern office in Baton Rouge. We will get to all of those momentarily, but first that News-Star article of Monday, July 2.

This publication, located in northeast Louisiana nearly 200 miles from the State Capitol, blew the lid off secrecy and misdirection in the Jindal administration with its story on Monday and in so doing, literally embarrassed the stodgy Baton Rouge Advocate with its fully-staffed Capitol News Bureau ensconced comfortably in the basement of the State Capitol.

All reporter Barbara Leader did was obtain email exchanges between State Education Superintendent John White, Jindal mouthpiece Kyle Plotkin and the governor’s policy adviser Stafford Palmieri which revealed White’s plan to “muddy up a narrative” and to “take some air out of the room” with a “due diligence” cockamamie response to news stories about questionable approvals of school voucher requests, most notably the 315 vouchers for Ruston’s New Living Word School.

In the wake of Leader’s latest revelations, one must be left to ponder the wisdom of keeping a policy adviser like Palmieri who apparently did nothing to keep White from making an idiot of himself with his ill-advised scheme or, for that matter, Jindal’s lobbying to hire a state superintendent like John White in the first place.

White’s email to Plotkin and Palmieri take on the appearance of a Shakespearean tragicomedy after he had been put on notice that he should be expected to answer questions about the department’s approval of New Living Word to participate in the expanded voucher program during his confirmation hearings before a legislative committee in the session’s final days.

In fact, White, through spokesperson Sarah Mulhearn, even went so far as to deny to LouisianaVoice that such vouchers had even been approved. In a June 26 email to LouisianaVoice, Mulhearn wrote, “The specific information you requested is not available because final seat numbers have not yet been decided. No school, including New Living Word, has been approved for any definite number of vouchers/scholarships. The 315 is only the number requested by the school.”

Now it appears that explanation may well have been subterfuge on the part of the department and White. Indeed, who knows what to believe from Education now? Any pronouncements from that agency–from the Jindal administration in general, for that matter–must now be taken with all due skepticism with a view toward an ulterior motive.

But as Sen. Ed Murray (D-New Orleans) pointed out during White’s confirmation hearing, there was no mention of “preliminary” acceptances in letters to accepted schools, including New Living Word, nor was there any mention of any “next phase” to include follow-up visits to schools prior to White springing the two terms on the committee.

White, in his email to Plotkin and Palmieri, said on the eve of his confirmation hearing, “I’d like to create (emphasis ours) a news story about the ‘the next phase’ of determining seats in schools before Murray creates an additional story for us tomorrow. I’d also like to take some air out of the room on the floor tomorrow and to give Steve (Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, chairman of the House Education Committee) some cover.”

Let’s see that again: “I’d like to CREATE a news story (as in make one up, concoct, fabricate, etc.) about ‘the next phase’ (this was White’s first-ever reference to any “next phase” in the approval process for school vouchers) of determining seats in schools before Murray creates an additional story for us tomorrow.” In other words, White puts it all in writing where it can be retrieved under a public records request as to how he plans to lie to the committee during his all-import confirmation hearing.

Again, and understand this in no uncertain terms: he is revealing to the governor’s office his plans to lie to the committee and no one in the governor’s office did a damned thing to try and stop him.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is Nixonian at its most basic level and must not be tolerated.

Remember, White was under oath when he testified at his confirmation hearing.

Where is the outrage?

White also wrote that his plan “would chill out some of our friends (presumably recalcitrant legislators), who aren’t being very helpful on the MFP (Minimum Foundation Program, the state formula for funding K-12 public education) by letting them know we’re thinking of the ‘criteria for participation.’”

Wow. What?

And at the end of the day, White, instead of attempting to explain his deliberate, pre-meditated duplicity, chose to question Leader about how she obtained a copy of his email.

Perhaps Mr. White should refer to R.S. 44:1 et seq., otherwise fondly known as the Louisiana Public Records Act.

Not that this administration has any true regard for R.S. 44:1 et seq.

Way back on March 28, LouisianaVoice made a public records request in which we requested information as to Jindal’s whereabouts on specific dates in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, as well as a couple of dates in 2007 when he was still a member of Congress.

What we received in return was a dressing down by Plotkin in two separate emails on March 29. The first, at 8:52 a.m., said, “…it’s clear that you are simply making up travel dates in 2010 when the Governor was actually in state. You obviously have a bad source of information.”

He followed that with a second email at 9:05 a.m. that again said, “You are now trying to make up information.”

The only problem with his theory was that the dates we requested were dates of airline ticket purchases listed in Jindal’s own campaign records for 19 trips to Atlanta, nine to Fort Worth, seven to Houston and two each to Chicago and Dallas. We were quite naturally curious as to who made the trips and why.

It’s not that LouisianaVoice suspected anything illegal or underhanded about the trips; we just wanted to know where Jindal was on those dates. That was more than three months ago and there still has been no response to that request other than executive counsel Elizabeth Murrill’s offering of some travel receipts that did not correspond to the dates requested. Nor did her office allow LouisianaVoice to scan the information into a hand-held scanner, instead requiring that LouisianaVoice pay for the information.

But for the biggest mystery in town, one might contemplate creating a game called “Where’s Timmy” were it not for copyright laws involving “Where’s Waldo.”

Back in October, right after his re-election, Piyush announced that his Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell was leaving his $165,000-a-year position with the administration, “effective immediately,” to head up the Baton Rouge office of OnMessage, Inc., a political consulting firm out of Virginia.

OnMessage was used extensively by Jindal in his 2007 campaign which shelled out something around $1.3 million for consulting work by the firm.

Moreover, an OnMessage partner, Curt Anderson, ghost-wrote Jindal’s yawn-inducing book Leadership and Crisis.

So it was only natural that Teepell would gravitate to the firm and even set up shop in Baton Rouge after leaving the campaign.

Or did he? Did he actually join OnMessage? For that matter, has he ever really left Jindal’s employ? The answers to both questions remain hazy eight months after his announced departure.

While it’s true that the last official date of employment with the governor’s office was July 1, 2011, it’s also true that Jindal’s campaign picked him up about that same time, making a $6,324 payment to Teepell on July 15, 2011 and continuing those payments through Dec. 30, 2011. In fact, he received pretty healthy bumps in pay during his last four months when his pay was $11,872 and $17,856 on Oct. 14 and Oct 24, respectively. He then received a payment of $18,140 on Oct. 31 and payments of $18,562 each on Nov. 30 and Dec. 30.

Jindal’s campaign was continuing to shell out big bucks to OnMessage at the same time. The campaign paid OnMessage nearly $46,000 during November of 2011 and another $55,000 in December, well after his October re-election.

The November and December payments to Teepell might raise a few eyebrows given the fact that OnMessage released an announcement on Oct. 24 to the effect that Teepell had joined the firm “as a partner and head of our new Southern office.”

“Teepell will open and manage our new OnMessage Southern office in Baton Rouge and will work on campaigns throughout the country,” the press release said.

The only problem with that is that announcement was last October and eight months later there still is no listing in the metropolitan Baton Rouge area for a phone number or for a physical address for OnMessage. It’s rather difficult to drum up business when you don’t have an office or a phone.

A check of the Secretary of State’s corporate records was equally fruitless; there was no listing for OnMessage, Inc., meaning the company is not registered in Louisiana even though it ostensibly has an office in the capital city. Somewhere.

In February, it was announced that Teepell’s OnMessage office in Baton Rouge had signed on to work for Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy’s 2012 re-election campaign.

Again, the only problem is that when Congressman Cassidy’s campaign expenditures were searched, there were no payments to OnMessage or to Teepell through May 31. None. Zilch. Nada.

Teepell, while not physically occupying an office or having a phone listing, however, has maintained a regular and highly visible presence in and around the governor’s office and governor’s mansion. And during the recently-completed legislative session, he could routinely be found in the section on the floor of each chamber set aside for the governor’s staff as he monitored the progress of administration-favored legislation.

That then begs the question that if Teepell is indeed working for OnMessage, when and where is he conducting his consulting business? Where is the “OnMessage southern office in Baton Rouge?”

Given the time Teepell spends at the Capitol and the governor’s mansion and given that there is no listing for an address or phone number for OnMessage and given the fact that Jindal’s campaign has not made a payment to OnMessage since Dec. 30, 2011 and given the fact that Cassidy has paid neither OnMessage nor Teepell, a lot of loose ends are left hanging and a lot of questions are left unanswered.

To borrow a phrase from Plotkin, is someone trying to make up information?

Where’s Timmy?

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3rd lawsuit filed over Jindal’s education reform bill; ‘Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night’ (Bette Davis)

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Public Records, Transparency, Vouchers on June 28, 2012| 7 Comments »

A third lawsuit was filed in state district in Baton Rouge on Thursday that charges Gov. Bobby Jindal and the legislature with violating the Louisiana Constitution when enacting Act 2 of 2012.

The action was taken on behalf of more than 30 local school boards working through the Louisiana School Boards Association, according to Robert Hammonds, legal counsel to LSBA and many of the local districts involved.

“All elected officials, including school board members, are required to take an oath of office that pledges to uphold the Constitution and laws of the State,” observed John Smith, president of LSBA and a school board member in St. Charles Parish.

“To the best of our ability, the members of LSBA operate mindful of our oath,” he added. “We have a right to expect that the Governor and members of the Legislature do likewise, and we have both a right and a civic duty to challenge them when we feel that they have failed to do so.”

“The Constitution was approved by the voters of the state”, according to Hammonds, “and, if the state wants to act contrary to its provisions, the Legislature should put before the voters the changes it wants to see. Until those changes are approved by the voters of the state, however, the existing provisions apply and cannot be disregarded by the Governor, the Legislature, or the school boards bringing this action.”

One of those constitutional requirements is that all bills receive majority vote of the membership of both houses to become effective. The vote on the MFP concurrent resolution (SCR 99) in the House of Representatives was 51 in favor, 49 opposed, and 5 not voting. House Speaker Chuck Kleckley, R-Lake Charles, ruled that the resolution had been approved. When he was questioned by other representatives about how it could have passed since it did not get majority vote of the 105 member House of Representatives, he stated that the House had a “long history” of violating the Constitution.

The LSBA-coordinated legal action is mounted against the Act 2 part of Gov. Jindal’s capitalist education reform package. Vouchers, legacy charter schools, and other parts of the reform program included in SCR 99 will siphon from the public school systems the limited dollars received from the state for public education. There has been no increase in state funding of public education for the last four years, despite ever increasing costs to the school systems for state-mandated retirement and group health insurance costs, among other expenditures.

“The lawsuit alleges that Act 2 and SCR 99 violate the Constitution by diverting money to non-public schools when the Constitution mandates the funds be allocated to public elementary and secondary schools to insure a minimum foundation of education in those public schools,” said Hammonds. The suit also alleges that part of the public dollars to be distributed to non-public schools, groups, and programs in Act 2 and SCR 99 comes from locally generated tax revenues. The tax propositions passed by the voters in each local school system call for the funds generated by those measures to be used for the benefit of the students and employees of that system, though, and not for the support of private and parochial schools and their employees.

Gov. Jindal claims that Act 2 gives parents the opportunity to escape failing schools. He has touted the state’s RSD schools as models of educational reform despite the fact that 100 percent of direct-run RSD schools have received grades of “D” or “F” and 79 percent of the RSD charter schools have received grades of “D” or “F”, according to Smith. “It makes no sense – educationally or financially – to take more than $150,000,000 from public school systems in the state to fund state-run and state-supervised programs that are less successful than those operated on the local level.

A preliminary hearing on the LSBA case, which will be consolidated with the cases filed by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana Association of Educators, is expected July 10, Hammonds said. “It is significant that the LSBA, the LFT, and the LAE have similar concerns about Act 2 and SCR 99 and the impact of such legislation on the future of public education in this state. We will be working together to bring those concerns to the attention of the court in the clearest and most concise fashion.”

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