re: Are you bullish on the future of EBR Parish?

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For the record, I don't think it would have hurt br and I also don't think it would have worked.

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So many issues hurt the school system, a lot of which have been discussed. Deseg, busing, old buildings, bad teachers, parents who couldn't care less, etc.

Do you build new schools first in SE EBR where there are none, or do you renovate the ones in the northern part of the parish first? Northern residents would cry racism, while southern residents would keep kids in private schools or move to AP/LP.

I'm very interested to see what the school system can do since it has been lifted. The new schools they have been building will complete some of the puzzle, but until they build parental involvement and teacher retention, we will still be missing parts.

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Not exactly sure what your statement has to do with whether Rouzan will be a positive addition to Baton Rouge or not.

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If the only thing it does is establish a culture of developers connecting roads into a somewhat usable block system, I will be perfectly happy. It is amazing to drive around this city and see dead ends and neighborhoods that are disconnected. Look at the area between Perkins, Lee, Highland and Kenilworth for a perfect example of this.

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The biggest determinant of success is whether that child comes from a 2 parent home or a broken home. The nuclear family is not only the key to a good education, it is the key to wealth generation. It all comes back to too many students being raised in single-parent homes by parents who don't value education and view the school system as nothing more than a glorified baby sitter.

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Exactly. I've even heard stories from teachers that I know (who are white women) who have students in 3rd/4th grade that they do not have to follow the rules or listen to the teacher because they are white. It is horrible what some of these children learn from their home environment. Race should have nothing do with the authority that a teacher has over a student.

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A common denominator appears to be Bayou Duplanier. You can't cross it unless you're on Stanford or Lee. Another issue is no additional North/South crossing on Dawson Creek in the area, unless you're on Kenilworth or Staring.

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Yep, a few bridges would be nice.

LOL @ St. George

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You have your opinion and I have mine.

My opinion is that Kip has been a key leader in the growth of Baton Rouge. He is a people person and a connector. He brought development, tourism and new industries to Baton Rouge along with helping to facilitate the continued improvement of our quality of life. He may not have solved all our problems. But Kip for Lt!

He stood against st george to protect the greater good. I'm sorry it's personal. It may have been shady but in the end, if the idea were as great as some make it out to be it would have never come down to a couple thousand signatures. If the group fighting for the effort actually put out a plan on what the hell they were going to do instead of blaming ebr and stating how great they would be, then the people would have probably been more receptive. It was an amateur effort.

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Fair enough. I never thought the St. George effort was particularly well-organized, but it should have gone to a vote. The corruption by city hall denied people the right to have a vote. That's the area of my criticism.

I think Kip held it off for the time being, but the next go-round will be starting in about 18 months and it will divide the parish yet again. I just wanted to see some real leadership out of my elected officials to bring people together. Instead he treated 20,000+ concerned citizens like enemies and didn't do a damned thing to address their concerns. Our public school system is one of the worst in the nation. I would "LOL" at it like some d-bag did in this thread if it weren't so sad.

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I am also bullish on Baton Rouge. At least the area below I10 and Jefferson(Bocage to the garden district and goodwood) to Mid City. If some of the things in the works make it to completion, the area will be better than it has ever been. Things in the works: children's hospital, bike trails connecting tinsel town area to downtown, new south branch library, children's museum, water campus, street car, lsu lakes revitalization, Lee High, River District, if the zoo were moved it would be moved in this area, Rouzan, entergy site and a possible railroad to New Orleans.

Anyone that is bearish on Baton Rouge isn't paying attention or refuses to see the progress.

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Great post.

I've lived here my entire life and its incredible the amount of good change I have seen.

The one thing that makes most of us worried, and the reason why having good leadership for the state/city is important, is the chance that these things never get done. Government street/mid-city seems like its been talked about forever, but nothing has happened yet. It has the opportunity to be an incredible part of the city, so I cannot wait until something happens.

I am bullish on BR as well. I see so much positive going on. I live in the garden district, and I love everything about it.

That being said there are some major problems we face:

1)Traffic is terrible plain and simple. Plans should have been made a decade ago, but now we are looking at at least 10 years until we see major traffic changes. We are just way to big of a city to not have some sort of by-pass or loop. Too many people use I-10/I-12 on a daily basis for it to be filled with 18 wheelers daily. Not to mention when something happens on the one bridge we have, it affects every single major street in the city.

2)Education is horrible. There is not a single public school in the city that I would consider sending my child too.

3)Crime is actually not as bad as rates would indicate. The vast majority of south BR neighborhoods do not experience much crime. BR is very well segregated compared to cities like New Orleans. There are a few pockets of low income and crime producing areas that if gentrified would really do all of BR good. Gardere/burbank, Brightside/alvin dark, valley park, and in between downtown and LSU. Some of these are already in the works. The way I see it, if we can almost completely segregate south BR from north BR, we can create more jobs and slowly and surely bring more and more people into the middle class.

It really all comes down to the fact that our state is broke. Money fixes everything. That is why our city and state need leaders that will actually get shite done. We need people that will bring more and more companies like IBM into the state. We need people that can make the best LSU students want to stay in BR after they graduate. We need planners and doers. I have confidence BR can get on the right track and solve these problems sooner rather than later. Its why I did not even consider moving to Houston coming out of college. I always wanted to be in BR.

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Then why didn't the St. George effort fight to improve schools vs. putting all their eggs in the incorporation basket?

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Like I said, there are lot of things St. George could have done better. But this thread, particularly my posts, have been focused on how EBR handled the concerns of taxpayers in the southern part of the parish.

(Now, it is worth remembering that many of the key leaders behind St. George had tried to improve the existing EBR schools for years and got discouraged. Norman Browning, for example, was an active volunteer on Woodlawn's campus)

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Their concerns are improved schools, which has nothing to do with the City-Parish leadership. St. George forgot about the reason why they started the effort and spent their focus on "taxation and improving city services" this is why they lost.

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It started as "local schools for local children" but were denied by the legislature. They were told they'd need their own city to get their own school district (possibly poor advice BTW). So that's what they did. Realizing they'd need to expand their vision beyond just schools in order to justify creating a new city, they brought up taxation in the unincorporated parts of EBR as a side-issue.

We can debate those St. George decisions all day long, but it's beside the point of how EBR reacted to it. No matter how you slice it, the city-parish leadership had a chance to bring people together and failed. They had a "let me show you how we do things in Baton Rouge" attitude and they will pay dearly in 18-24 months for that. In fact they are already paying for it with the accelerated flight of families to Ascension and Livingston.

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Agreed. And I believe that a 5th municipality in the Parish doesn't solve the situation.

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You may well be right. Doesn't justify corruption and disenfranchisement to defeat it though, does it?

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No matter how you slice it, the city-parish leadership had a chance to bring people together and failed.

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Why are the St. George leaders exempt from this?

I stand firmly that had the schools effort taken the no from the legislature and worked with the leadership throughout the parish, we'd have neighborhood ISD's already in progress.

That was all pre-deseg...