(Baton Rouge – February 22, 2013) Today’s announcement of yet another standstill budget for public education left the president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers shaking his head in bewilderment.

“It is universally known there are huge problems with this system, and the system is currently being tweaked,” (LFT President Steve) Monaghan said. “Nonetheless, there is still an unrelenting persistence to defend the system by any means necessary, including the use of suspect data to impugn the quality of teachers who are fed up and are voting with their feet.”

Update: The hearing for a new trial has been rescheduled and will be held on Monday, March 4, in Baton Rouge's 19th Judicial District Court.

(Baton Rouge – January 24, 2013) A Baton Rouge district judge has agreed to rehear arguments that one of Governor Bobby Jindal’s signature education acts violates a constitutional prohibition on bundling multiple objectives in one piece of legislation.

Act 1 tied virtually every aspect of a teacher’s professional life, from salaries to tenure to termination, to a new evaluation system. But it also changed several sections of law dealing with the powers of school boards and superintendents.

BESE adopts changes to Bulletin 741, with minor modifications

Perhaps influenced by thousands of e-mails, telephone calls and personal contacts, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education made some modest adjustments to proposed rule changes affecting Bulletin 741, the School Administrators’ Handbook.

Public schools should be made safer without turning them into armed camps, Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan told a legislative committee meeting in the aftermath of a horrific school shooting in Connecticut.