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READING AHEAD
ELECTION 2025 ST. GEORGE
Mayoral hopeful back in race Morgan briefly ended run after prostitution bust resurfaced
BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER
Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By DAVID GRUNFELD
As Louisiana students make big strides in reading, state officials have credited schools’ embrace of the ‘science of reading.’ Schools in St. Charles Parish were early adopters of the new way to teach reading.
St. Charles Parish revamping how kids learn to read BY ELYSE CARMOSINO Staff writer
Inside a classroom in St. Charles Parish, a group of first graders sit around their teacher as she points to an easel with a large piece of paper titled “READING.” Under it, six steps lay out how to identify a word using its vowels and syllable type. Today, the group is working on consonant blends, when two or three consonants appear next to one another in a word. The students start by reviewing “S” blends, reciting the words wasp, crisp and clasp. “We’ve got to say that blend to help us read the word correctly,” Toni Dugas, a reading intervention teacher at Norco Elementary School, tells her students. To an untrained observer, it might have looked like a typical reading lesson. But in fact, it’s a big departure from how reading has been taught in many U.S. schools, where phonics instruction is kept to a minimum and students are encouraged to use context clues to read unfamiliar words. In sharp contrast, the approach used in Dugas’ classroom is based on a body of research known as “the science of reading,” which teaches students to decipher words letter by letter and sound by sound. This year, national data showed Louisiana led the country in fourth-grade reading gains on a closely watched test and outpaced other states in post-pandemic reading improvement. State education leaders credit the success to a series of
Almost a week after announcing he was dropping out of the March 29 mayoral race in St. George after he was confronted with a decadesold guilty plea for soliciting prostitution, Republican Jim Morgan now says he’s back in. “It’s on,” he said Monday evening in an interview. “My opponent, Dustin Yates, and his campaign play Morgan very dirty,” Morgan said earlier Monday in a statement announcing he’s rejoining the race. “This almost broke my family.” Morgan’s decision means Yates, who has been serving as interim mayor, ran unopposed for less than a week in the first-ever race to lead the new city. “Jim Morgan’s problems stretch far beyond his prostitution conviction, his erratic Facebook posts at 4 a.m., or his lack of participation in or understanding of why we created this city,” said Lionel Rainey III, campaign strategist for Yates’ campaign. Morgan said last week that he
ä See ST. GEORGE, page 7A
A teacher shows a flashcard to a child on Feb. 17 as part of the reading program at Norco Elementary School in Norco. laws and policy changes over the past four years that have pushed Louisiana schools to adopt practices rooted in the science of reading. It’s an approach that’s gained traction throughout the U.S., with 40 states passing similar policies over the last few years. St. Charles’ school system has been on the front lines of the shift, having spent years transitioning to methods informed by the science of reading that are meant to systematically teach students how to read words one sound or letter pattern
at a time. While the process was difficult, Norco staff and teachers say that their students have seen undeniable success, as demonstrated by rising test scores. The old methods “served us really well at certain times in the past, but now we have more advanced research,” said Assistant Superintendent Erin Granier, who called the new approach “a game changer.” Now, “we know how kids learn to read.”
ä See READING, page 4A
Federal appeals court halts case
Legal challenge to La. execution protocols could be reopened BY JOHN SIMERMAN Staff writer
his claims. But even as Trump and Musk pressed their case, the Office of Personnel Management informed agency leaders that their workforces were not required to respond by the deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters. Just after 7 p.m. — hours after
A federal appeals court in New Orleans has halted a judge’s decision to reopen a legal challenge to Louisiana’s execution protocols while it considers an opposition from Attorney General Liz Murrill. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a one-sentence order on Monday, issued an administrative stay of U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick’s ruling from last week. Dick ruled Friday in favor of attorneys for death row inmates who are seeking to fend off the first Louisiana execution since 2010. They had asked Dick, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, to revive a long-dormant
ä See WORKFORCE, page 7A
ä See CASE, page 4A
Trump backs Musk as he roils federal workforce BY CHRIS MEGERIAN and LINDSAY WHITEHURST Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump backed Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees explain their recent accomplishments by the end of Monday or risk getting fired, even as government agency officials were told that compliance with Musk’s edict was voluntary. Confusion and anger over the situation spawned new litigation
WEATHER HIGH 73 LOW 47 PAGE 6B
and added to turmoil within the federal workforce. “What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ ” Trump said in the Oval Office during a meeting with French President EmTrump manuel Macron. “And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of
people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.” The Republican president s a i d M u s k ’s Department of Government Efficiency has found “hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud” Musk as he suggested that federal paychecks are going to nonexistent employees. He did not present evidence for
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