House adopts school board micromanagement limits
by Bill Barrow - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

After failing last year, Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, and a coalition of state lobbying forces won House approval today for a law that would bar individual local school board members from interfering in a local superintendent's day-to-day management of a system. The 75-17 vote sends an amended House Bill 942 to the Senate for consideration. Carter's effort last year was among the most divisive of the session, pitting local school board members against state Superintendent Paul Pastorek, among others, and ending in a 47-50 defeat on the House floor. Carter framed the latest version as intended to give superintendents more job security by amending state law to explicitly require a majority board vote in a public session to hire a superintendent, with a public two-thirds vote required to terminate the contract before it expires. The bill would leave in place a requirement that school boards take a majority vote in open session not to renew a contract when it expires.