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Private schools dismayed after funding limited Legislature provides set amount for LA GATOR program
BY PATRICK WALL | Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By BRETT DUKE
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologist Joel Caldwell throws a cast net in a canal in Port Sulphur on June 4. It’s believed that tilapia fish escaped from a corporate retreat near Port Sulphur nearly 20 years ago and despite a massive eradication effort in 2009 they’ve been found recently in Louisiana waters.
Tilapia resurge in Louisiana waters
Despite eradication effort, scientists find invasive fish
At Gardere Community Christian School in Baton Rouge, hopes were high for LA GATOR. Many thought Louisiana’s new program, which gives families state-funded grants for private school tuition or homeschool expenses, could be life changing. Teachers and administrators showed up at the school on the Saturday in March when applications opened to help parents apply. And in May, students and parents pleaded for funding for the program during a state Senate hearing. “Allow my sister and brother and everyone else in my neighborhood to have such an amazing learning journey,” said Radiance Bailey, a fifth grader with five siblings at the school and two more hoping to enroll. On Thursday, many people at Gardere and private schools across the state were bitterly disappointed when the Louisiana Legislature passed a state budget that included far less funding for LA GATOR than its backers sought. The families of nearly 40,000 students had signed up for LA GATOR, but now only 1 in 7 applicants are expected to receive grants.
ä See FUNDING, page 4A
BY ALEX LUBBEN | Staff writer PORT SULPHUR — Along the levees in this former company town near the end of the Mississippi River, a destructive fish is making an unexpected comeback. Tilapia, a commonly farmed fish that’s ubiquitous at grocery store seafood counters, can pose a dire ecological threat when released into the wild. That’s exactly what happened in this Plaquemines Parish community about 20 years ago, when the fish escaped from a bass pond on a property owned by one of the largest mining companies in the world. Chris Schieble, a deputy assistant secretary with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said he believes the fish broke free when Hurricane Katrina flooded much of the parish. The LDWF then led an effort to kill the tilapia in 2009. At the time, it appeared that the eradication had succeeded. Bad news: The fish are back. While there is no way to definitively prove that the new tilapia are related to those that escaped from the pond two decades ago, Schieble believes that is likely the case. A new study also suggests some of the fish from then survived. Either way, another eradication or monitoring effort may be necessary.
Audit: La. DCFS vacancies remain high ‘High turnover, high burnout,’ former employee says
BY CLAIRE GRUNEWALD | Staff writer
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologist Joel Caldwell holds juvenile tilapia collected from a canal in Port Sulphur on June 4. “If this thing kept going in 2009, the tilapia would eventually have gotten through to the estuary. They’d be getting into other habitats and they would be displacing our native fishes,” said Martin O’Connell, a conservation biologist and director of the Nekton Research Laboratory at the University of New Orleans, who recently found the fish near Port Sulphur. “All the shrimp and all the baby crabs, they’d be suck-
ing them down like popcorn.” O’Connell was involved in monitoring the success of the effort to kill the fish. He recently conducted the study that suggests some survived. “We came really close to the holy grail of invasive species management, which is eradication,” said Michael Massimi, the invasive species
ä See TILAPIA, page 5A
An audit shows that Louisiana’s child welfare staffing needs remain high despite years of criticism of the agency over employee shortages. The audit of the Louisiana Department of Children and Families Services’ Child Welfare Division said vacant staff positions have increased from 118 in fiscal year 2023 to 140 in February. The area seeing the most vacancies was frontline child welfare workers. The report said DCFS “has struggled to recruit and retain qualified Child Welfare staff due to the nature and difficulty of the job, along with a low salary.” The audit said unmet staffing needs of at least 129 workers existed across the nine child welfare regions for fiscal year 2024. The Alexandria and Covington regions had the highest
ä See VACANCIES, page 4A
Loyola drops plans for St. Charles Avenue hotel
university “has officially ended consid- posal for the 4.2-acre Broadway campus University says historic eration of the developer’s proposal and met with nearby residents to update them on the project, which was still in will not move forward with this plan.” property has ‘better uses’ The letter did not explain why univer- the conceptual stages.
BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL | Staff writer
Loyola University has scrapped plans to turn several historic buildings on its Broadway campus along St. Charles Avenue into a boutique hotel with up to 100 rooms, a conference center and a restaurant and bar. In a letter to neighbors dated June 11, Loyola Vice President and General Counsel Sharonda Williams said the
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sity leaders decided not to pursue the project, saying only that “we will communicate any future construction plans that may be slated for our Broadway Campus to you.” In a prepared statement Thursday, Loyola said that “the university has determined there are better uses of the property that support the University’s mission.” The decision comes just two months after developers working on the pro-
In 2019, the university selected Woodward Interests to come up with a preliminary proposal for the campus, which was originally the site of St. Mary’s Dominican College and has been owned by Loyola since the 1980s. At the April meeting, Woodward CEO Bill Hoffman and land use attorney Mike Sherman said the idea was to convert the
ä See LOYOLA, page 4A
STAFF FILE PHOTO By JAVIER GALLEGOS
Department of Children and Family Services Secretary David Matlock hands out an information pamphlet on April 8. A recent audit shows that Louisiana’s child welfare staffing needs remain high despite years of criticism of the agency over employee shortages.
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12TH yEAR, NO. 308