Baton Rouge’s Rich Want New Town to Keep Poor Pupils Out: Taxes

[onehandle]

Source: Bloomberg

In East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods want an educational divorce from a neighboring community where four out of 10 families live in poverty.

Saying they want local control, they’re trying to leave the 42,000-pupil public-education system. They envision their own district funded by property taxes from their higher-value homes, which would take money from schools in poorer parts of state-capital Baton Rouge, home of Louisiana State University. They even want their own city.

Similar efforts have surfaced in the past two years in Georgia, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee, some of them succeeding as the end of court-ordered desegregation removed legal barriers. The result may be a concentration of poverty and low achievement. A 2012 report by ACT, the Iowa-based testing organization, found only 10 percent of low-income students met college benchmarks in all subjects, less than half the average.

“It’s going to devastate us,” said Tania Nyman, 45, who has two elementary-age children in the Baton Rouge system. “They’re not only going to take the richer white kids out of the district, they are going to take their money out of it.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-06/baton-rouge-s-rich-want-new-town-to-keep-poor-pupils-out-taxes.html

[EC]

1. Well, that's the good ole American spirit.

or what it's become anyway. There is no war on the poor and working class is there? Right.....

[Rider3]

4. Yep...

That's exactly what I was thinking.

[Brigid]

18. Actually, it *is* the American spirit.

I got mine; you can fend for yourself.

[kairos12]

2. Ok--then let us lesser types demands refunds for the roads, water, electrical grid,

and all other infrastructure that support sending their kids to what amounts to a private school system.

Talk about pulling up the ladders behind you.

[Burf-_-]

3. These people...

are the ones who have the audacity to call themselves Americans, patriots, or open minded. The reality is that they are the same kind of fascists in the name of unrestrained capitalist idealism, as the nazi youth party was to national socialism in nazi germany. They have been propagandized to so well it makes you wonder why the hell, WE ( the democratic socialists), ever let it happen. You heard me... it's not more about the success of their lie machine, than it is about how WE sat back and allowed the lies to perpetuate and program an entire new generation with the same shit. WE have to get fucking busy !


The truth is... we watched this happen without acting to counterbalance it soon enough, but truth also is... WE...can shut it down. WE WILL shut it down !!!

[AndyTiedye]

14. Counterbalance With WHAT?

They have been propagandized to so well it makes you wonder why the hell, WE ( the democratic socialists), ever let it happen. You heard me... it's not more about the success of their lie machine, than it is about how WE sat back and allowed the lies to perpetuate and program an entire new generation with the same shit.

How do you think we could have stopped them? They bought all the Tee Vee stations because they have far more money than we do. We could not possibly outbid them. We could protest the transfers at the FCC, and we did in some cases. I can't think of any cases in which such actions were successful.

What kind of "counterbalance" could there have been?

[Burf-_-]

16. think Ukraine

[AndyTiedye]

19. That is Just What the Military/Police/NSA/Prison Complex Wants Us to Do

They are ready and waiting for just that.

So are the RWNJ militia types

and the NSA.

[Burf-_-]

20. and look what happened

a corrupt government got it's ass handed to it. Fear the people, or be overthrown.

[Redfairen]

5. What? Are their school vouchers not good enough for them?

Why don't they send their kids to private school? The state will pay them to do it. Some people will just always refuse to be satisfied.

[Bandit]

6. E Pluribus Unum

[Burf-_-]

9. more like ....

radix mallorum est cupiditas......

considering the source.

This type would never consider themselves one with the many. Only One, in and of themselves ALONE.

[alp227]

7. NPR in my area played this Black History documentary last night.

State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement

After hearing it, I feel history repeating itself.

50 years ago, people who hated Medgar Evers giving commentary on a local TV station (WLBT - they have quite a history, look it up on wikipedia) would phone in the station and say "get that G.D. N-word off my TV!" and the station manager politely says "Fairness Doctrine".

Nowadays, wingnuts proudly put their name and face next to bigoted comments whether reacting to the Coca Cola Super Bowl ad, Macklemore performing "Same Love" at the Grammys, etc. with "fags" and N-words uncensored.

Back then, racist white families sent their kids to private fundie Christian academies after the public schools got desegregation.

Now, they want to secede from the city if there are too many, err, undesirables in the city.

[tclambert]

8. Oh, no, no, no, they aren't racist. It's not black kids they hate. It's POOR kids.

A few of those poor kids might be Hispanic. Oh, there's one who looks white. Nope, false alarm. One of his great-grandparents was black, so that makes him black, too. Still, in theory, they don't oppose black children, per se.

And don't get started on that class warfare stuff, either. Rich people won that war long ago. Get over it.

[AnneD]

10. Penny wise and pound foolish....

we all benefit from an educated work force. Just ask all those wealthy that have trophy homes in resort areas. When you fall and injure yourself, how will save you butt: the maid you pay minimum wage to or the volunteer fireman that got his training at the community college the next county over (because you were too cheap to fund a local community college for the folks that live there year round). That is based on a true story. I took my Nursing talents and left the region because they were too cheap to pay nurses decently.

[Ed Suspicious]

11. Is this a push back toward separate but equal?

[packman]

12. It happens all the time

and you aren't even aware of it. It's probably happening right now in your county or community. I taught in an affluent Maryland county and it was divided economically, politically and socially into Up county (the rich, well to do,white, suburban area) and the Lower County (nearer a metropolitan city, lower income housing, minority population). And while schools were to be on an equal footing in regard to supplies , facilities,and educational expectations, everyone knew that the schools were better up county, the expectations of students learning were higher from the teachers, and the physical appearance of the school and the materials in those schools were of a higher quality.

[maindawg]

13. This is part of a strange tea party idea

They hate public education. They resent teachers and they especially hate that they have to pay property tax to fund public schools. I think its because children are being educated and taught science and are exposed to ideas and stimulated to achieve success. And the tea party hates that. Its liberal. They even call it liberal arts. Imagine that, teaching children 'liberal arts'.
But they still want to school to be free. Whether its public or not, they expect it to be free.
So we have vouchers. And a private school in every town. Why cant the rich people in Baton Rouge open a private school?

[elleng]

15. What else is new?

[BrotherIvan]

17. IGMFU

Class war at its finest.