One More Time for the Billionaires in the Back: There is no acceptable 9-member plan
On Thursday, April 21, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board will hold another public hearing at 5pm to allow public input on the map which was approved by a narrow vote at the April 7th meeting. That map—EBR SB Plan 22—was nominated by District 1 School Board member Mark Bellue. It’s a 9-member plan which was one of the 19 maps approved by the board on March 3rd, but it was never previously mentioned by any school board member, much less any member of the public. It was not mentioned on the public portal. It was not mentioned at the Public Redistricting Workshops. It was not mentioned at any Redistricting Public Hearing.
EBR SB Plan 22 was mentioned in the report written by Tony Fairfax, the independent demographer who evaluated all 19 maps, but not in a favorable light. Fairfax determined that EBR SB Plan 22 fails to adhere to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as it has only three majority-Black districts.
There were at least two dozen community members at the April 7th meeting who testified in support of the only other map nominated, the Ware-Collins 11, an 11-member plan. No one testified in support of EBR SB Plan 22.
Nonetheless, Mark Bellue was joined by four of his fellow board members and EBR SB Plan 22 was approved on a 5-4 vote. Not one of those five school board members offered an explanation for his or her vote. They sat silently while one community member after another testified in support of the Ware Collins 11 Plan. And they remained silent after they voted in direct opposition to the voices in the community.
Yes, it is relevant that the five school board members who voted for the map which fails to adhere to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are all white Republicans. However, it’s also worth noting that all five are considered to be “business-backed” school board members. In regards to their vote for the 9-member plan, the fact that they have all enjoyed the support of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and the pro-charter SuperPACs is actually more relevant than their race. They are in those seats because they garnered the support of the pro-charter business interests. Three of those five school board members—Connie Bernard, Jill Dyason, and David Tatman—were on the EBR School Board in 2014. All three voted in favor of the unjust reapportionment which downsized the board from 11 to 9 members. The other two school board members who also voted in favor of Plan 22—Mark Bellue and Mike Gaudet—are themselves on the school board thanks to the unjust 2014 map and the support of the pro-charter business interests. Both factors enabled them to defeat white candidates who opposed the proliferation of charter schools.
So while it may seem like race is the predominant factor, it’s not the racial makeup of the board that hurts or helps the pro-privatization business interests. It’s the enlarged districts which result from a smaller board. Larger districts are more susceptible to the influence of campaign contributions. The only way to mitigate that influence is to increase the number of single-member districts in order to reduce the size of the districts and the elected official to constituent ratio.
The pro-charter business interests are well aware of this. They do not care about the race of their chosen candidates. They care about the candidates’ support for charter schools. Their SuperPACs have helped elect both white and Black school board members. Ensuring the map abides by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not threaten their control of the board.
What has threatened their control of the board? The community advocates who have pushed for the number of school board members to be restored to 11 or even increased to 15. The pro-privatization folks desperately need community advocates to stop pushing for an increase in the overall number of districts and instead focus on simply increasing the number of majority-Black districts in a 9-member plan.
How convenient that of the current business-backed school board members, the five white members chose a map that fails to increase the number of single-member districts and glaringly violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. That move provides an opportunity for the narrative around the board’s proposed map to focus on its inherent racism while ignoring the critical issue of unlimited campaign contributions and the manner in which they undermine the integrity of our elections with a 9-member plan. (In three school board districts, a democratic election wasn’t even held in 2018. The sitting business-backed school board members were reappointed to their seats for lack of opposition.)
I’m pretty confident that the number of majority-Black districts will increase either through public pressure or through the courts. Meanwhile, some community groups are likely to focus solely on increasing the number of majority-Black districts in a 9-member plan. Once that’s accomplished, these groups may very well pat themselves on the back for a “win,” even though a 9-member plan will allow the pro-privatization interests to continue to elect pro-charter school candidates who will further privatize the public school system. Once our schools are privatized, the school board will simply be a group of powerless figureheads themselves, all of their power having been diverted to the charter school boards whose members are unelected.
So once again: There is no acceptable 9-member plan.
The 9-member plan adopted in 2014 rigged the system to privilege pro-charter school candidates with an insurmountable advantage. And now our only recourse is to beseech those who rigged the system in the first place to unrig it.
Does that sound like democracy to you? Does that sound like a republic? You’ve probably heard the story associated with Benjamin Franklin, who was asked as he exited the Constitutional Convention in 1787 whether our form of government would be a monarchy or a republic. The Founding Father famously responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
What’s clear from our experience with the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board is that we no longer have a republic—if we ever did.
The system is rigged. We have the appearance of democratic elections but the rich and powerful are effectively dictating the outcome of our elections. And what the 2022 redistricting process has made clear is that the system will never be unrigged by those who helped rig it in the first place.
This is not a true democracy. This is not a true republic.
I am sure to some I may sound hyperbolic, but this is not hyperbole. The rich and powerful pouring money into our school board elections do not value democracy. They value only the appearance of democracy. Don’t take it from me. Listen to Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix who was invited to speak in Baton Rouge in 2019 about his efforts in support of education reform. (You can find his speech on the YouTube channel for Louisiana Public Broadcasting.)
In his speech, Mr. Hastings declares, “The problem is governance.” He then spends quite of bit of time attributing all sorts of ills to democratically-elected school boards. Please know most if not all of his claims are based upon faulty premises and questionable deductions, but even if they weren’t, his subsequent proposal has rather troubling implications that he doesn’t even seem to be aware of. He proudly announces that 20 years ago, “We figured out that nonprofits should run most of our public schools.”
Here’s the thing about nonprofits. They are not democratic. Their boards are unelected. Their boards are self-perpetuating. New members are appointed by those who already serve on the board, and in the case of charter schools, they serve at the pleasure of the charter management organizations, which profit from this arrangement. It’s oligarchic not democratic.
This governance structure praised by Reed Hastings is antithetical to the concept of public education. Democratically-elected boards are a quintessential element of public education. You cannot have a truly public school system if it is not subject to the will of the people. And nonprofit boards are not subject to the will of the people. No teacher, no parent, no registered voter has the ability to elect members onto—or off—nonprofit boards. It is an undemocratic governance structure, and Reed Hastings blithely declares his allegiance to instituting this oligarchic governance structure controlled by a wealthy few. Maybe if he’d made his declaration while shirtless and astride the back of a horse the implications of his remarks would be painfully clear to all who hear them. As it is, his wealth affords him, and by extension his advocacy for an oligarchic form of government, an air of respectability. It is critically important for people to see past that veneer and recognize that Russia isn’t the only place where it is possible to institute an oligarchy that operates under the pretense of a democratic republic.
The EBR School Board’s vote on April 7th in favor of a nine-member plan in spite of overwhelming public support for an increase in the number of single-member districts is indicative of the degree to which our school board has been hijacked by business interests who do not value democracy, who in fact see democracy as a failed governance structure. Reed Hastings, his fellow billionaires, and other pro-charter school business interests are chipping away at a cornerstone of our democracy—public education—and at our form of government altogether. And too few seem to care.
Many are familiar with the words of Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Fewer seem aware of the sentences that follow: “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
These are the words that should haunt every one of us now. I appreciate all who sent emails to their school board members, posted on the public portal, or even testified in person in support of increasing the number of single-member districts on the EBR School Board. Unfortunately, the billionaires and business interests are not going to have a change of heart because a couple dozen people show up to testify at a school board meeting.
So please ask yourself: How much do you believe in the ideals set forth in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution? How much do you believe in democracy? Do you want to keep (or establish) a true republic? Or do you just need the pretense of one?
For further reading: A Good Law is Hard to Find, Part II