EBR superintendent: ‘The district is making gains’

Despite tight budgets, the East Baton Rouge Parish School System has posted “double-digit” improvements that have in some cases outpaced growth at the state level, new EBR Superintendent Bernard Taylor says. He expects that trend will be seen to continue when school performance scores are released next month. “The district is making gains,” he says, although the general public may not know about the progress. He says the district’s “signature” programs, such as magnet programs, can be supported only because the system has nearly 43,000 students, adding that those programs might be limited if the system is broken up into smaller districts as some have proposed. Taylor notes that public schools must take all comers, regardless of poverty, learning difficulties or other factors, and says the system’s profile would be different if more people chose their local public school. “How do we encourage people to just go to [public] school in their neighborhood?” he says. When pressed on that point, Taylor says parents often choose not to send their children to neighborhood schools based on false perceptions, not reality; for example, he says some people think the system still conducts forced busing for desegregation purposes. He adds that some people aren’t comfortable sending their kids to a high-poverty, high-minority school. “We can’t apologize for who we serve,” he says. “And we shouldn’t.” Taylor spoke today to the Baton Rouge Press Club. —David Jacobs