Voters in one of Louisiana’s high-performing school districts are angry that their public schools will lose funding to pay for Governor Bobby Jindal’s harebrained voucher scheme, which sends students to backwoods fundamentalist schools that teach religious doctrine.
Jindal insisted that this could not possibly be true, that the vouchers were drawing money from someplace else, not from local taxes. Where does he think taxes come from? Is there a reserve fund in the bayou?
This blog calls him out for trying to hoodwink smart people. In fact, the schools of St. Tammany Parish stand to lose more than $2 million to satisfy the governor’s ideological wishes.
Apparently stung by a series of public meetings in St. Tammany Parish, during which school board members laid out the damage that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education agenda is causing to public schools, the governor “launched an offensive last week to say local tax dollars are not actually being used to help pay for some students to go to private schools,” according to Advocate columnist Mark Ballard.
The governor’s attorney told Ballard that “No local funds, not one dime of property ad valorem taxes or of property taxes or of any millages, any taxes, can be traced” to a student attending a private or religious school because of Jindal’s voucher scheme.
That artfully worded dodge conceals the fact that the state funds the vouchers in part by holding back money that would otherwise be sent to local school systems. As Ballard writes, “The state writes a check to the private schools and discounts local school districts the same amount.”
That amount includes money approved by local taxpayers for teacher salaries, school construction or other local education needs.
Reblogged this on Crazycrawfish's Blog and commented:
Thanks Dianne! I’ve been trying to get people to understand this since March. This method of defunding could result in schools getting zero dollars in state aid and it also applies to charter schools, not just vouchers! Not sure what the state would do when the calculation resulted in a net negative payment to school districts. Would they get sent a bill instead of an MFP check?
What I want to know is WHERE are the lawsuits? Civil rights and other groups should be inundating the courts over these schemes that have as one of their goals resegregation.
St. Tamany Parish does have a federal lawsuit already filed.
If the GA charter amendment passes, we will see similar holdbacks. They say they won’t take any local funds from county or city system revenues but will give more from state coffers to make up for what the students in state commissioned charters don’t get out of local pot. I am sure inevitable next step will be less to local schools but same or more to state schools. City of Milton’s own state legislator Jan Jones serves on ALEC education committee and got this amendment pushed through. Probably won’t see her around town at any member discount stores after this…her nicely padded purse will enable exclusive luxury shopping. I do think some of these folks fool themselves into believing their actions will serve the greater good. Ha, they serve only themselves and their cronies.
I think you just insulted hares, Dianne
I doubt hares would appreciate being equated with Bobby Jindal.