We've just finished up Week 7 of the Louisiana Legislative Session. Curious what your legislators have been up to for the last week? We've got the scoop after the click-through.
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Up until a couple of years ago, there was little attention paid to the content or the procedural method of legislative approval for Louisiana’s unique brand of K-12 educational funding. You see, back in the 1970’s the powers that be had a grand plan: protect funding for K-12 public education by putting the intent to do so in the Constitution. Sounds good right?  The “Minimum Foundation Program” (MFP) is thus enshrined in Article 8, Section 13(B) of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974. It is meant to calculate a per pupil amount that constitutes an automatic appropriation of funds, once approved by the legislature. Its name suggests that it should fund the “minimum” level of educating our state’s public city and parish school students. The Constitution also sets out that it should do so “equitably.” Recently, in our organization’s lawsuit against the State, the Supreme Court of Louisiana agreed that the plain language of Article 8, Section 13(B) restricts MFP dollars to precisely those uses. 
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3 QUICK FACTS on Out-of-school Suspension in Louisiana, 2009-2010 • Out-of-school suspension is not solely a popular disciplinary tool in large urban districts, but is being used frequently all across the state.  • The list of districts which suspend the largest number of students in proportion to their total enrollment actually suggests that students in rural, lower-enrollment districts are actually more likely to be suspended from school than students in most urban areas of the state. • Black students are almost universally over represented in the numbers of children suspended out-of-school in Louisiana.
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