Bernard Taylor and Sarah Broome

Both Bernard Taylor and Sarah Broome want to improve the quality of education East Baton Rouge Parish school system students receive. They’re working toward that goal, however, in nearly opposite ways.

Taylor, who took on the role of superintendent last June, says he eyes with caution Broome’s innovative residential charter school, which houses and educates 20 sixth-grade students Monday through Friday.

He says it’s an interesting proposition, calling it a “new level of customer service” and noting it could easily be perceived as sad that the environments surrounding students at home and on school campuses are so detrimental that they must be secluded throughout the week in order to have greater success.

Broome says she wanted to create an environment that would be completely free of distractions for students. The idea came to her after a student at the school where she taught was fatally stabbed in a street fight.

Broome says she asked herself what would have made a difference for that girl.

“I thought, ‘What can we do to offer kids limitless opportunities?’ What they choose to make of it is for them to decide,” she says.

Taylor believes education reform can be had by less extreme means, including engaging parents better, hosting more professional development seminars for teachers and encouraging more community and philanthropic support.

He knows it can be done, he says, because he received a quality education himself from quality teachers in tough Pittsburgh public schools. He does note, though, that his district’s resources are limited.

2013 could reveal whose methods prove most effective and where public education in Baton Rouge goes from here. thrivebr.org, ebrpss.k12.la.us