BESE returns proposal

• By WILL SENTELL
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Oct 14, 2009 - Page: 1B

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Angered by the application process, a state panel voted Tuesday to try to return a proposal for a new charter high school in downtown to the East Baton Parish School Board.

The proposed school would be called Baton Rouge Regional High. It would operate initially in the Shaw Center for the Arts.

The local board rejected the plan in August, which was then submitted to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for approval.

That action was originally set for 2 p.m. Tuesday.

But a committee of the state board said it wants backers of the high school, East Baton Rouge Parish Schools Superintendent John Dilworth and others to try to reach agreement on another look at the application.

Linda Johnson, of Plaquemine, a member of the state board, said applicants submitted an inadequate plan to the local board — as little as seven pages long — in hopes of winning state approval later with a 71-page application.

Johnson said school backers followed that with a highly irregular lobbying campaign to win state board approval for the school.

“The tactics that have been used are unbelievable,” she said.

“Every time I turned around, someone was trying to coerce us,” Johnson added.

The latest applicant is called Helix Network of Educational Choices.

Bryan Jones, chairman of the group’s board, did not attend Tuesday’s session but said he was surprised by the committee vote.

However, Jones said later that his group looks forward to working with East Baton Rouge Parish school officials and hopes to “repair any relationship or any broken trust that may have occurred in the past.”

Dilworth told the board that there has to be trust between backers of the high school and local school officials.