SADOW: BPSB accountability gap widens

As if by design, the reinforcement of isolation has led to a consequence of that isolation, which for the Bossier Parish School District has led to disdain for families seeking the best education for their children.

Last week, the special election for School Board District 5 came and went without anyone challenging Republican Logan McConathy, who was appointed earlier this year to replace Republican Adam Bass, who was elected to the state Senate. Logan McConathy is the son of Mike McConathy, who once taught in the school system but rose to prominence after going from coaching basketball at Bossier Parish Community College to Northwestern State University (where Logan was one of his players), and who ran unsuccessfully last year against the parish’s other senator, GOP Alan Seabaugh. Logan is the grandson of, and Mike is the son of, John McConathy, who went on to become superintendent of Bossier schools after a pro basketball career.

If all this legacy made Logan McConathy’s layup to complete a term inevitable, it also fit the pattern. In the 2022 election, nine of the returning incumbents were unopposed, and newcomer independent Craton Cochran (though his father serves on the police jury) did not run for an open seat. The other two incumbents, both of whom won seats in special elections, easily defeated challengers.

2022 was not atypical either. In 2018, only two seats were contested, and in 2014 only three, which was the last time an incumbent president was defeated. It has not been since 2010, with eight contested seats, that there has been any significant accountability through the electoral process.

One might interpret the relative silence as community approval of the school board members’ decisions. But the facts surrounding recent board decisions suggest a more valid interpretation: this has fostered an insularity increasingly focused on protecting self-interest rather than the interests of the people.

For example, both East Baton Rouge Parish and Caddo Parish schools are currently engaged in searches for a prominent superintendent, with much public input and a concerted effort to cast the widest possible recruiting net. In the case of EBR, the board initially rejected the internal candidate for months due to its failure to recruit national candidates, which, with the deadline approaching later this week, has forced the intervention of state Superintendent Cade Brumley, while Caddo has begun the process through a series of public meetings.

By contrast, Bossier’s process was virtually a state secret last year with no public input, so it was no surprise that internal candidate Jason Rowland was thrust into the job with no visible competition. It fit a decades-long pattern of recruiting from within. The public was most aware of Rowland at the time from his tenure as assistant superintendent, where he had spearheaded efforts to establish school health clinics in a movement that seemed driven more by federal priorities and grant dollars than by actual value to students and the district, let alone the implementation of clinics that could controversially undermine parental control of children through treatment decisions.

But Rowland and the system had only just begun to curtail families’ educational choices. Earlier this year, as the legislature debated education savings accounts, Rowland, contrary to the research findings on the issue, not only falsely stated publicly that ESAs would cause a return to the days of segregated schools but also made the sinister implication that their proponents were racists. The ESA legislation, if watered down, eventually passed, likely resulting in some Bossier families sending their children to out-of-district schools, but not before the board passed a resolution riddled with misinformation opposing ESAs.

Rowland then apparently spearheaded a bill that eventually became law that weakened accountability by removing the most valid and rigorous measure of student performance, the standardized ACT exam, from being administered to all students in schools. This will have the effect of artificially inflating schools’ accountability scores. Rowland apparently proposed this to Republican Rep. Dennis Bamburg, another former school board member who now serves in the legislature, who drafted the bill and, along with Bass, pushed it through.

And now there’s this. Last week, the board addressed Act 715, passed by the Legislature this spring, which changes from optional to mandatory, allowing homeschooled students to participate in district extracurricular activities, including athletics. The BPSB has continued its policy of not allowing this for the past decade.

At the Administrative Committee meeting, the new law was roundly criticized by board members, particularly three of the most reluctant Republicans, Glen Bullard, Kent Bockhaus and Bille Jo Brotherton. Bullard did indeed ask that a motion be made to adopt procedures to comply with the new law, to give the district maximum latitude to override the law, even though Bossier already conceded that homeschooled students may participate in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps activities and, as officials admitted, parents of homeschooled children were asking about it. At the subsequent regular meeting, policies mirroring the state law were approved without discussion, but Brotherton, Bullard and Cochran opposed it and Bockhaus abstained.

(In a sign of how profound the disconnect is, Rowland’s successor as assistant superintendent of administration Andrea Spinney lamented after the vote that she thought lawmakers were trying to get her to do things like this in the bill and apologized for making them deal with some “dirty” stuff. Bill 715 passed unanimously in both chambers in its final form, with both Bass and Bamburg in that majority.)

Note how for some members in this case, and more generally the responses of the entire board on the other issues, betray an attitude that speaks more of a desire to protect territory and strengthen their own positions than to fulfill the preamble to Article VIII of the Louisiana Constitution: “The purpose of the public educational system is to provide learning environments and experiences, at all stages of human development, that are humane, equitable and designed to promote excellence, so that everyone gets equal opportunities to develop to their full potential” (emphasis mine). It does not say that “public school enrollees” should be given this opportunity, but “every individual,” whether they are homeschooled or using ESAs to attend another school physically or virtually.

Yet this war on accountability for their actions—by weakening the district’s performance metrics and trying to prevent families from having access to alternatives—is partly the fault of a voting public that has failed to challenge their presence on the board. That needs to change to prevent the board from acting contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, but McConathy’s walk to a full term is not a hopeful sign that will happen in 2026.