225BatonRouge.com

In the interest of privacy, FEMA protected and kept on the street three sex offenders.

It wasn’t until the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Department pushed its way into the park with a surprise convoy they found the three and arrested them on the spot.

225 sent a writer to report on daily life at the park, but security guards hampered his efforts to enter, and then FEMA officials tried everything in their power to keep him from interviewing park residents.

With persistence, he managed to get in and what he found was park residents fed up with conditions there. 225 still hasn’t heard back from FEMA or its contractor, Keta, about why they were so secretive.

We discovered even local law enforcement couldn’t find out who was living at the park because FEMA has flatly refused to share information.

The tactic begins to make sense when you consider FEMA is working furiously to locate tens of thousands of temporary travel trailers in communities all over south Louisiana. FEMA certainly doesn’t want those communities to block new trailer parks due to fears of unsafe or unpleasant living conditions at Baker or its other parks.

Is that why FEMA tried to keep the Baker trailer park under wraps?

Maybe we’ll never know. But one thing is sure: The agency, for all the good it has done in helping victims of the hurricanes, needs to operate more openly and should cooperate with local authorities, or it may again find itself in the dubious position of protecting criminals from law enforcement.

Get schooled

Change is in the air in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, and that’s a good thing.

Board elections are this fall, and more than half the board members say they won’t run again. The board is no longer under a federal court order, so the members will be in charge.

The system already has changed dramatically. Zachary opted out. Baker opted out. Central hopes to do so soon.

This means a much smaller system, even when you count evacuees who stayed.

It’s also a system that’s going to have an even higher majority of black students, probably 80%.

The system is still broken, but it’s better off than New Orleans, which was broken and bankrupt. It took a hurricane to do what the New Orleans board, BESE and Superintendent Cecil Picard wouldn’t do–shut it down.

Now New Orleans has the chance to do it over. What about Baton Rouge? Will new faces bring new thinking and once and for all stem the exodus of white students to private schools or other school systems?

A good system is crucial to the quality of life for everyone in East Baton Rouge.

We say vote in all new members and send a message that we want better schools now.