SADOW: BPSB Accountability Void Expanding

As if on cue, a reinforcement of insularity led to a consequence of that insularity, which for the Bossier Parish School District breeds contempt for families seeking the best education for their children.

Last week, qualifying for a special election for District 5 of the School Board came and went with no one challenging Republican Logan McConathy, who had been appointed earlier this year to replace Republican Adam Bass, who had been elected to the state Senate. Logan McConathy is the son of Mike McConathy, who at one time taught in the school system but gained fame mainly after he moved on from coaching basketball at Bossier Parish Community College to Northwestern State University (where Logan was one of his players), and who last year ran unsuccessfully against the other state senator representing the parish, the GOP’s Alan Seabaugh. Logan is the grandson of and Mike the son of John McConathy, who after a professional basketball career eventually became superintendent of Bossier schools.

If all of this legacy made Logan McConathy’s layup into completing a term inevitable, it also fit the pattern. In 2022 elections, nine of the returning incumbents running faced no opposition, and neither did newcomer independent Craton Cochran (although his father sits on the Police Jury) for an open seat. The other two incumbents, both of whom had gained seats through special elections, easily defeated challengers.

Nor was 2022 atypical. In 2018, only two spots were contested, and in 2014 only three, which was the last time an incumbent was defeated. It’s been since 2010, with eight contested seats, that there has been any significant induction of accountability through the election process.

One could interpret the relative quietude as community assent of school board member decisions. But the facts surrounding recent Board decisions suggest a more valid interpretation: this has bred an insularity which increasingly looks to protecting self-interest rather than the people’s interests.

For example, currently both East Baton Rouge Parish and Caddo Parish schools are undergoing high-profile superintendent searches, with plenty of public input and concerted efforts to cast as wide as possible a recruiting net. In the case of EBR, the board initially rejected the internal candidate for months as it failed to woo national candidates that as it approaches a deadline later this week has forced the brokerage of state Superintendent Cade Brumley, while Caddo has  begun its through a series of public meetings.

By contrast, Bossier’s process last year was close to a state secret with no public input, and therefore it was no surprise that the internal candidate Jason Rowland was grooved into the job without any visible competition. This fit a pattern spanning decades, to hire from within. To the public, at that point it was most aware of Rowland from his assistant superintendent post where he had spearheaded efforts to create school clinics in a move that seems more driven by federal priorities and grant dollars than actual value to students and the district, much less usher in clinics which controversially can subvert parental oversight of children through treatment decisions.

But Rowland and the system were just getting started in trying to limit family educational choice. Earlier this year when the Legislature was debating educational savings accounts, Rowland, contrary to research conclusions on the issue, not only mistakenly declared publicly that ESAs would prompt a return to the days of school segregation but also in the process made the sinister implication that supporters of it were racists. The ESA legislation, if watered down, eventually passed that likely would prompt some Bossier families to send their children to schools outside the district, but not before the Board passed by all present a resolution chock full of erroneous misinformation opposing ESAs.

Then, Rowland apparently served as the genesis of a bill that eventually became law weakening accountability by removing as compulsory the most valid and rigorous measure of student achievement, the ACT standardized exam, from application to all students in schools. This will have the effect of pumping up artificially school accountability scores. It seems Rowland suggested this to Republican state Rep. Dennis Bamburg, another former School Board member serving in the Legislature, who authored the bill and along with Bass pushed it over the goal line.

And now there’s this. Last week, the Board took up dealing with Act 715 passed by the Legislature this spring that changes from optional to mandatory allowing homeschooled students to participate in extracurricular activities in a district, including athletics. The BPSB for the past decade had continued the policy of not permitting this.

During the Administrative Committee meeting, the new law was criticized roundly by board members, particularly by three of the most mossback, Republicans Glen Bullard, Kent Bockhaus, and Bille Jo Brotherton. Indeed, Bullard asked if a motion to adopt procedures to conform to the new law could be crafted to give the district the maximal latitude to shunt aside the law, even as Bossier already accedes to letting homeschool student participate in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps activities and, as officials admitted, parents of homeschooled children asked about this. In the subsequent regular meeting, the policies reflecting state law were approved without discussion, but with Brotherton, Bullard, and Cochran opposing and Bockhaus abstaining.

(To show how thorough the disconnection is, after the vote Rowland’s successor as assistant superintendent of administration Andrea Spinney lamented that she thought with several changes like this to statute that legislators were out to get her and she apologized for having to have them deal with some much “yucky” stuff. Act 715 in its final form passed unanimously in the both chambers, with both Bass and Bamburg in that majority.)

Note how for some members in this instance, and more generally reactions by the whole board regarding the other issues, betray an attitude that speaks more of a desire to protect turf and enhance their own positions than to fulfill the Preamble to Article VIII of the Louisiana Constitution: “The goal of the public educational system is to provide learning environments and experiences, at all stages of human development, that are humane, just, and designed to promote excellence in order that every individual may be afforded an equal opportunity to develop to his full potential” (emphasis mine). It doesn’t say “enrollees of public schools” be afforded this opportunity, but “every individual” whether homeschooled or they use ESAs to attend another school physically or virtually.

Yet this war against accountability for their actions – by weakening measurement of district performance and by trying to prevent families from accessing alternatives – is partially the fault of a voting public that doesn’t challenge their presence on the Board. That needs to change to keep the Board from going against the spirit of the Constitution, but McConathy’s stroll into a full term isn’t a hopeful sign that will happen in 2026.

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