Legal Challenge

The Baton Rouge Advocate today carries a story about letters sent to voucher schools by the LAE attorney Brian Blackwell warning them that they may be subject to lawsuits from the LAE for participating in the voucher program.  Some see this as an unfair scare tactic, and some believe the LAE is using strong arm "Union" tactics. I disagree. And I know who really used strong arm tactics to pass this privatization scheme with the use of our tax dollars. That "scholarship" money is money we all contributed for public education, not for the enrichment of a few greedy preachers and for the large corporations who are pushing to enlarge their virtual schools in Louisiana.

The following is the comment I submitted to the Advocate in response to this article:

I am a member of LAE and I know Brian Blackwell the LAE attorney. He is an excellent lawyer and he just doing his job as dictated by normal legal practice. He is simply covering all the bases by notifying the voucher schools that by accepting vouchers they may be participating in an activity prohibited by the Louisiana constitution. This is not a scare tactic, it is a legal tactic if your position is that our tax dollars cannot be legally used to support private schools. The governor on the other hand has played real hardball by allowing the firing of state employees and the punishing of legislators that have the nerve to disagree with his policies. For example we have seen the firing of an education official who had the nerve to report possible illegal activities of one of the Governor's favored charter schools. Later on the school was closed when the evidence could not be ignored by BESE.