Years ago, an aspiring young legislator, contemplating his next move, was advised to run for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education as a stepping stone, perhaps, to Congress or statewide office. “No way,” he responded, saying that running for BESE as a champion for public education was a good way to go nowhere fast in politics. The people with money, he reasoned, don’t care about BESE because they send their kids to private or church schools. What’s more, outside of parents, the middle class is not invested in public education because the highest-in-the-nation homestead exemption largely relieves them of paying for it. That has left those with the greatest stake in the system—the teachers, superintendents, employees and local school boards—to organize and win BESE elections. Their success has been facilitated by lack of competition from candidates backed by the business community, which in the past was focused on legislative elections. This is the year that changed. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
