Baton Rouge Schools still in Crisis

Last night I watched a wonderful show on Louisiana Public Broadcasting called Baton Rouge's Troubled Waters

The shows main theme at the beginning was centered around the story of young blacks back in the 40's that were drowning in tragic accidents. Back then there were no pools for black residents. Now this was a era of no air conditioning so one can just imagine how HOT and unbearable Baton Rouge was back then. This kids would go swim everywhere they could. Well after the drownings the black community built a pool. This leaps into the history of Civil Rights movement in Baton Rouge.

The show was good in many ways. Including showing sides of the dynamic black community of Baton Rouge back in the 40's and 50's that I suspect many were not aware of.

However the end of the show sort of left a sour taste in my mouth because one gets the impression that things are great with the East Baton Rouge School System. Well they are not. As this good post from Revolution 21 shows at Maybe it's time you tried, Baton Rouge . A very good read. I posted in his comment section:

Good post and I intend to link tomorrow. When I lived in BR I was always at a loss to explain the whe public lack of caring about public schools since I was from North Louisiana and largely just living there for a period of time. It did deem that people almost took a perverse pleasure in voting down school taxesThis is all ironic because I just got finished watching a show on LPB called Baton Rouge and troubled waters that touched on the integration of schools.http://www.lpb.org/programs/brtroubledwaters/

They highlighted a school(where it appears things are going right) I think it is was called McKinley Middle Magnet School at the end.

However the end of the show really did seem like it was dishonest. Because it seemed to leave the impression that things were great in school system and victory was achieved(note funding for this show was done in part by the EBR school system). It was an excellent show but the end and not even trying to show we have some real problems after all this sort of ruined it for me.

Anyway good post by this blogger. Needless to say there is blame going out in a thousand directions for the failure of the EBR school system. That includes people of all races and religious backgrounds However as citizens , even if we have children in private schools, you just cannot abandon it. That make no sense on a ethical, moral, economic, or even practical level.