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McNeese president picked to lead LSU
Baker charter group gets $7M grant
Rousse promises corporate-oriented leadership
Helix one of 22 U.S. charters to get funds
Board also selects chancellor for BR campus
BY CHARLES LUSSIER Staff writer
Just two months after taking over the operations of Louisiana’s lowest performing school district, a Baton Rouge charter group learned that it will have millions of dollars in additional federal money to help in turning around the schools. The U.S. Department of Education awarded Helix Community Schools a $7.1 million charter school expansion grant. Helix is one of 22 charter schools awarded money this grant cycle and the only one from Louisiana. Helix reopened the city of Baker’s two remaining traditional public schools — Baker High and Park Ridge elementary school — as charters. “We’ve got this great partnership and collaboration in Baker, and it’s going well. And then we get the support of the United States government,” said Preston Castille, who serves as Helix’s president and CEO. The grant is also helping to fund the expansion of Helix’s original school, a high school in downtown Baton Rouge. It will add elementary grades to the school, but at another location. Charter schools are public schools run privately via contracts, or charters. Castille said the grant money will come in especially handy in allowing Helix to pay for several job positions at each of its schools for the next five years. However, while the grant was awarded in late September, the money is not yet in hand, a victim of the ongoing shutdown of the federal government. Castille said he expects to start receiving grant money 30 to 60 days after the
BY CHRISTOPHER CARTWRIGHT Staff writer
After a monthslong process and two hours of deliberation by the LSU Board of Supervisors, McNeese State University President Wade Rousse is LSU’s 29th president. A Louisiana native, Rousse pitched himself as a nontraditional candidate who would shake up the university with corporateoriented leadership after past presidents had lengthy academic backgrounds. He said the exact date he will start hasn’t been set. In an unexpected turn of events Tuesday afternoon, the board simultaneously appointed another finalist for the president position — James Dalton, executive vice president and provost at the University of Alabama — as the executive vice president of LSU. The position will include the traditional chancellor role of the flagship campus in Baton Rouge and signals a significant change to the current system. Accepting his position, Rousse said he intended to put a detailed organizational chart out in the next 30 days and called the appointment “the honor of my life.” “Thank you for thinking creatively,” he told board
STAFF PHOTO By JAVIER GALLEGOS
Wade Rousse, front, and James Dalton receive a round of applause and shake hands on their way to the podium after being named LSU president and executive vice president, respectively, during the LSU Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.
Sources: LSU to name Ausberry AD BY WILSON ALEXANDER
LSU leadership discussed the topic when the LSU Board of Supervisors entered a private executive session LSU is naming Verge Ausberry as Tuesday morning to choose new system its full-time athletic director, multiple president Wade Rousse, sources said, sources told The Advocate on Tuesday, a and Rousse made the decision later on decision that was made less than a week his first day in office. A formal announcement is expected in after the ouster of Scott Woodward and gives the athletic department clear lead- the coming days. Ausberry declined to ership in the midst of a football coaching ä See AUSBERRY, page 10A search.
Staff writer
ä See LSU, page 10A Ausberry
ä See BAKER, page 11A
Former Vice President Cheney dies at 84 He was a powerful and polarizing figure
died Monday from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said Tuesday in a statement. In Cheney’s hands, the vice presiBY CALVIN WOODWARD dency became a nexus of influence and Associated Press manipulation — no longer the timid ofWASHINGTON — Dick Cheney, the hard- fice whose occupants had tended their charging conservative who became boss’s ambitions, gone to endless banone of the most powerful and polariz- quets and often waited in the wings for ing vice presidents in U.S. history and their own shot at the prize. “The Darth a leading advocate for the invasion of Vader of the administration,” as Bush described the public’s view. Iraq, has died at 84. When he bunkered in secure unGeorge W. Bush’s vice president
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disclosed locations after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, that was less an inconvenience for Cheney than a metaphor for a life of power that he exercised to maximum effect from the shadows. No one seemed more amused at that perception than Cheney himself. “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.” Cheney served father and son
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO By CHUCK BURTON
Dick Cheney served two terms as George W. Bush’s vice ä See CHENEY, page 6A president.
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