re: shreveport vs. lafayette business climate

On a side note, Lafayette has made strides to make their economy more diverse. It's an emerging medical city; every hospital in the area has expanded and many specialty hospitals have moved into the area. Oil will stay in Lafayette for a long while, one reason, Lafayette has developed itself as a manufacturing hub for many service companies including Baker and Halliburton and has an extremely skilled workforce in that field. Also, due to mergers and acquisitions, three of the fastest growing banks in the state are based in the city making moves into Houston, Dallas and New Orleans. And technically, Lafayette only counts two parishes in it's MSA but neighboring parishes that count on the city for services number over 600,000. Oil is still head and shoulders the king of the city but it is a lot different than the eighties.

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Shreveport is much larger and the center for most of the larger businesses in the metro area. This includes large attorney firms, banks, financial companies, oil and gas companies, etc. While both have their drawbacks to doing business, Bossier has a bad reputation for being a "good old boys network." Shreveport suffers from some of the same ills as well.

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I would agree with this.

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Bossier may have a higher average school system but the top schools in the area would undoubtably be located in Shreveport. More people than one would think from Bossier send their kids to Loyola. As for colleges I would imagine anyone would see LSUS and Centenary as being better options than BPCC.

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I would make these corrections:

1. The best school is Caddo Magnet in Shreveport. It's not even close.

2. The next tier of schools in Shreveport...ie, Loyola, Byrd, Shreve are no better than Bossier's Benton, Parkway, Airline, Haughton.

3. The lowest tier of HS in Shreveport = the vast majority of HS in Shreveport. Fair Park, Woodlawn, Booker T, Green Oaks, Southwood, Northwood, etc. The only HSs in Bossier to reach that depth of lowliness would be Plain Dealing and Bossier HS.

4. The private schools in Shreveport that are not Loyola are horrible academically. Evangel, Calvary most notable.

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That's what I figured

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I got to have something to read at Starbucks with the Quad and Oat Meal. I actually pay for USA. I pull NYT and WSJ out of the 'yesterday's paper bin.' But NYT is pretty useless since most of it is about ballet dances.