#TROY CARTER VS KAREN CARTER PETERSON TRIAL#

Viewers then heard Branche say, “It appears as though her husband was going to be hired in the new school system.” “Do you know why they did it?” asked Richardson. “There was money to be made off the kids,” Oliver said. When you stop operating schools, there’s no need for teachers.” “At the end of the day, an elected school board in Orleans had their own audit tell them that in six months they would be out of money,” Roemer said. Troy Carter receives two important endorsements in the race to replace Cedric RichmondĬaroline Roemer, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, said the hurricane and the school system’s financial mismanagement left the board with no other choice. The School Board suspended the teachers shortly after Katrina and formally laid them off in March 2006. Over time, the Orleans Parish School Board and the RSD transformed New Orleans’ system into one made up entirely of charters. Peterson voted against the bill, as did other members of the New Orleans legislative delegation. More than a year later, weeks after Katrina shut down New Orleans and emptied its schools, Blanco pushed Act 35 through the Legislature to allow the RSD to take over New Orleans’ entire school system. In the race to replace Cedric Richmond, see who has the biggest campaign warchest Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, and Cecil Picard, her state superintendent of education. In 2004, the state Legislature approved Peterson’s bill, Act 193, to address chronic problems with New Orleans’ school system, which was running out of money because of misspending and corruption and because too many of the schools were failing state standards.Īct 193 allowed the RSD, which the Legislature had created the year before, to take over a handful of failing New Orleans schools. Bill Jefferson, who with others later went to prison.

#TROY CARTER VS KAREN CARTER PETERSON TRIAL#

It did not mention his testimony in the 2011 corruption trial of former City Council member Renee Gill Pratt, where he said he became a principal because of his work for the political machine led by then-U.S.

He was identified as a teacher and principal for 34 years. “Under Karen Carter Peterson, all the teachers were fired,” Oliver said to begin the ad. In fact, Dana Peterson did not take that position until 2012.Ĭarter’s ad features three former teachers and principals – Eddy Oliver, Cheryllyn Branche and Deborah Richardson – linking Peterson’s 2004 law with the post-Katrina layoffs, which has remained a festering wound among those who lost their jobs and has become a symbol of the hollowing out of New Orleans’ Black middle class since then. The ad also suggests that Peterson’s 2004 led to the hiring of her husband Dana as deputy superintendent of the RSD. “Teachers would have lost their jobs even if Karen Carter Peterson had not filed her bill.” “The Orleans Parish School Board laid off all teachers summarily because they had no money and no students,” said Leslie Jacobs, who was then serving on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, which sets state policy for K-12 schools. That’s not true, said several supporters of the 2004 law, which allowed a new state entity, the Recovery School District, to take over failing schools in New Orleans’ troubled school system after Katrina. Others in the 15-candidate field include Gary Chambers Jr., a Baton Rouge activist and Democrat, Desiree Ontiveros, a small business owner and Democrat in New Orleans, and Claston Bernard, a small business owner in Gonzales who has the endorsement of the Louisiana Republican Party.Ĭarter’s ad implies that a 2004 law sponsored by Peterson led to the layoffs of 7,000 teachers and school workers in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The 60-second ad, which began airing Monday, represents the first major confrontation between the two Democrats, who are favored to advance to an April runoff and replace Cedric Richmond in a district that includes most of New Orleans, the west bank of Jefferson Parish, the River Parishes and north Baton Rouge. “Troy Carter’s latest attack is a lie,” Peterson, who like Carter is a state senator from New Orleans, said in a statement. Only days before Saturday’s primary, Karen Carter Peterson is calling foul on Troy Carter for a television ad that slams her and her husband on education matters.

Troy carter vs karen carter peterson