Business Report Publisher Rolfe McCollister says a recent headline in The Advocate said it all: “Incoming schools chief Warren Drake to eliminate 34 Central Office positions, create 9, saving $1 million from East Baton Rouge payroll.”
Drake is wasting no time to bring changes and begin his new era of leadership, says McCollister in his new column.
“His reorganization reflects some dramatic changes to what he inherited from Superintendent Bernard Taylor. Drake has named 19 school principals (five replaced); reappointed 25 assistant principals and named four new ones; hired a top new administrator from the Zachary school system; and merged four positions into one for chief of communications and public relations,” writes McCollister. “Those within the system, parents and the public watching need to see that Drake is not just going to ‘talk the talk’ but will also ‘walk the walk.’ He is off to a good start—and the school board needs to back him up all the way.”
Also in his new column, McCollister—also an LSU Board of Supervisors member—notes that “the sky didn’t fall” on higher education during the recently-closed legislative session.
“Back on March 4, long before the Legislature began debate on the budget, I observed, ‘Too many of the voices we have heard recently—especially from the news media—sound like Chicken Little. Let me predict here and now, the world will not end for Louisiana or higher education during the upcoming session of the Legislature. Solutions will be found,’” writes McCollister. “We all know it was a tough session, but solutions were found and higher ed is basically where it began—and picked up some new autonomy it never had before that can bring benefits in the future.”
Most of the media were pessimistic and cynical from the start, says McCollister, never expecting “where there is a will, there is a way” could work at the Capitol this year.
“I know this positive outcome for higher ed and health care, reached without the governor raising taxes, just infuriates all the liberal newspaper columnists and doomsayers, who were counting on a meltdown so they could say, ‘I told you so,’” McCollister writes. “Fortunately, many in the Legislature did believe, and so did those in higher ed, especially LSU President F. King Alexander, and they didn’t give up.”
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