On Oct. 20 organizers of the effort to incorporate the city of St. George submitted to the East Baton Rouge Parish Registrar of Voters the fruits of their labor over these last nine months—a petition with some 18,200 signatures requesting a vote on the controversial incorporation issue.
And as Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel notes in her new column, one day later, the state Department of Education released its latest report card of school performance scores. “The timing, though purely coincidental, could not have been more fortuitous for the St. George folks, who were able to point to the report card results as yet another reminder of what is really behind their whole movement,” Riegel writes.
Though EBR public schools as a whole got a solid C grade—a score of 81.3, which is 1% higher than the 2013 score of 80.3—the number of failing schools in the parish actually doubled this year.
“The rhetoric we’ve heard over the last year is we’re better together and that things are getting better,” says St. George spokesman Lionel Rainey. “Well, now we get the report, and not only are things not getting better, but they’re getting astronomically worse.”
“Statistics being what they are, one can twist the data to make the case that schools are actually getting better, at least as a whole,” Riegel writes, pointing to a press release from the EBR school system highlighting the fact that more than half the district’s schools increased their performance scores. “As Rainey points out, however, it’s equally true that eight schools saw their scores fall from a D to an F, bringing to 16 the number of failing schools in the parish—nearly 20% of the total … That’s not acceptable, and it’s just the kind of ammunition the St. George supporters need as they transition from a petition drive to a political campaign.” Read the full column. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
