House approves term-limit votes for local school boards
by Bill Barrow - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

Thanks to angry school board members from around the state and the unsolicited aid of an unpopular state superintendent, Rep. Steve Carter couldn't even muster committee approval last year for a plan that would have cut local school board members pay and limited their terms. He said he learned his lesson and spent the months leading up to the 2010 legislative session meeting with local school officials from St. Tammany Parish to Shreveport on ideas to make local education hierarchies more effective. That strategy paid off Wednesday when the House voted 78-20, with none of the rancor of 2009, for a plan that would set elections for voters in each school district to decide whether their local board members will be limited to 12 years on the job. House Bill 410 now moves to the Senate, where it faces uncertain terrain. The bill is part of a package that Carter, along with the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Council for a Better Louisiana, a nonpartisan government watchdog, The coalition pushed several measures last year but got hammered by lawmakers, some of whom cast the bills as Superintendent Paul Pastorek's mission to run over local schools. This year, Pastorek and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education are on the sidelines.