Teacher Salaries And Charter Schools + Obama’s Executive Order Dispute

This week on "Wingin' It Wednesday", panelists Mike Stagg, Warren Caudle, and Carol Ross joined "Nathan and Bernie in the Morning" to discuss the school board's charter school issue as well as Obama's challenged executive order.

Here's what the panel had to say:

1. The Lafayette Parish School Board will consider on Wednesday seeking legislative relief from the impact of sharing about $929,000 in local tax dollars dedicated for teacher salaries with charter schools. Your thoughts?

Mike Stagg started us off:

First of all, they don’t know who they are dealing with. On the board of directors of one the charters here is Gifford Briggs. If you think for a second Page Cortez will standup against LOGA in any way shape or form? I don’t think so. So the school board doesn’t know who they’re dealing with. They need to find a legislature who might have a little independence.

Carol Ross posited:

I did a little research on these charters. They were setup as public charters. This issue is the poster child for the law of unintended consequences. Whether there is merit to charter schools or not, these private groups that setup themselves as foundations go to private management companies, so who is benefiting? It’s very likely benefiting the private management companies that are running these schools. The way these charters are setup, they’re hybrids of public/private where the public gets all the expense and the private gets all the profit.

Warren Caudle started us off:

This thing comes down to what’s at stake for so much of this stuff. Public/private entities getting in bed with each other. The line is really blurred between what’s public and what’s private anymore. You’ve got so much tax money going into this stuff. There are all kinds of people getting wealthy off charities.

Wingin It Wednesday; KPEL 96.5

2. President Barack Obama is arguing the law and history are on his side in a legal dispute over his executive order to protect millions of immigrants from deportation. Your thoughts?

Warren started us off:

I’d say that that’s probably the way things have always been. A President issues an executive order, some judge blocks it, then it goes through the court system, goes to the legislature, goes to congress, they pass a bill, and that’s the way the system works. That’s how it’s set up to work. This is a horrible situation that no one has a clear definitive answer to.

Mike concluded:

This Judge Hanen who issued the decision, he’s got quite the background. He stood up for property owners when they wanted to put up a fence down there.
He issued a temporary injunction. It will probably go to the Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see.

Carol started us off:

The House funded everything but the President’s order. Hanen’s ruling is on the merit’s of the executive order which the he says is absolutely disingenuous. So he’s saying let’s put a hold on it and allow it to work its way through the courts. This points out the really important job of appointing judges that follow the constitution.

To listen to the full audio from our Wingin' It panelists, click the play button below: