Bill goes to governor

05:45 PM CST on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. -- State lawmakers granted final approval Tuesday to a plan that would wrest most New Orleans public schools away from the often quarrelsome Orleans Parish School Board, allowing the state to run them or turn them over to independent foundations or universities that would operate them as charter schools.

State education department officials say the bill would allow the state to take over as many as 100 of 116 public schools in the city, where currently all public schools remain shut down in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which hit Aug. 29.

The final vote came in the House, where members voted 95-6 to go along with Senate language changes to the bill.

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers and it's New Orleans affiliate, United Teachers of New Orleans, had opposed the bill, saying teachers had little to do with its drafting and complaining that it would effectively do away with an existing collective bargaining agreement.

But Gov. Kathleen Blanco backed the bill, saying the Katrina-induced shutdown of the schools provided a rare opportunity to re-create the worst schools from scratch.

Louisiana education officials can already take over perennially failing public schools -- as graded under the state's accountability program -- anywhere in the state. Blanco's proposal expands that power in New Orleans, allowing the state to take over not just failing schools, but any school performing below the state average.

The schools would be placed in the state "Recovery District" and put into the hands of a university, nonprofit foundation or other independent entity as charter schools, or run by the state Department of Education.

Despite emotional arguments against the bill from union officials, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly for the bill, the latest in a series of measures that have slowly eroded the power of the Orleans board.

Last year, under pressure from the Legislature, the board approved a $16 million contract with New York-based Alvarez & Marsal, a financial turnaround firm, to take over the board's finances. That company's officials reported that the school system had record-keeping so slipshod that corruption and waste had flourished. Even accounting for the number of employees required a worker-by-worker audit.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)