re: Nice write up in today's Advocate on one of the St George City organizers

quote:

---

What are the problems facing the EBR school system? Why is there a push to split from it?

---

It's a long story, literally going back almost 50 years when the Fed government filed suit against the EBR school system for being segregated.

Basically, the Feds took over the management of the school system in order to desegregate it bringing about massive busing within the parish which dislocated many students from their traditional neighborhood schools resulting in "white flight" from the public school system.

With that white flight and lack of local control of the school system (the Feds were running it) came indifference by much of the population towards our public school sector. The system went into a serious decline.

The suit was settled in 2008 and the 2009 school year was the first year when the school board actually started being able to run the school system again.

Although the school system is no longer required to force students to be bussed all over the parish, a lot of parents are leary of the school system, although the system has already shown improvement as its school ratings improved from a D to a C just this school year.

It's a long way to go to be a good school system and some of the more affluent people who populate the St George area are tired of waiting for more improvement and want to establish their own system like Zachary, Baker and Central did a few years ago.