P.V. Griffin Addresses Bigger-Waters Act Concerns in D.C.

District 1 Councilman P.V. Griffin met with several congressional members in Washington D.C. earlier this month to discuss the growing list of issues Plaquemines Parish residents are struggling with.p-v-griffin

Among the representatives Griffin met with was Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-CA, co-sponsor of the Biggert- Waters Reform Act.

“I told her about the problems this legislation was causing for the people of this parish, and I told her it was going to kill my district,” said Griffin.

Griffin says he proposed a two-year compliance waiver, that would allow the parish
more time to complete their levee system and get it federalized, which could in turn lower the assessed base flood elevations.

“I think a two-year waiver on the elevation requirements will allow us to build our levees up, so hopefully instead of 21 feet we can get down to at least 8 or 12 feet,” said Griffin.

As far as making the case compelling for federal representatives who have several other things to tackle, he says that reminding elected officials unfamiliar with the small parish’s mighty contribution to the national economy, is crucial to getting their attention.

“I told them that we are a huge supplier of the country’s oil and gas, and a third of the country’s seafood but we’re being treated like step-children,” he said.

In addition to Waters, Griffin met with Louisiana Congressmen Steve Scalise and Cedric Richmond. As well as Congressman and Chairman of the Black Caucus Emanuel Cleaver, D-MO, and the staff of Louisiana Senators Mary Landrieu and David Vitter.

“I invited them all to come down and talk to the people to see how the decisions they make in Washington are affecting real lives,” Griffin said.

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Plaquemines Parish Receives Hurricane Isaac FEMA Grant to Repair Damaged Roads

Helping with its continuing Hurricane Isaac recovery efforts, Plaquemines Parish will receive a $1.28 million FEMA grant to repair roads damaged from the storm, FEMA announced on Monday. Between Aug. 26 and Sept. 10, Hurricane Isaac produced high winds, rain and flooding that hit Plaquemines particularly hard.

“Severe, slow-moving storms like Hurricane Isaac not only can cause tremendous damage to people’s homes and businesses, they can affect the infrastructure people depend on every day,” said FEMA coordinating officer Gerard M. Stolar. “Reimbursing the repair of the levee road puts the parish one step closer to normalcy after Hurricane Isaac.”

FEMA states that the elevated roadway on the parish’s secondary levee required repairs after the water receded, and that the FEMA Public Assistance grant, totaling $1,280,209, helps reimburse those repair costs.

The newly obligated funds are a portion of the $195.5 million in total public assistance recovery dollars approved for the state since the Aug. 29 federal disaster declaration for Isaac, FEMA announced on Monday. Plaquemines has received about $75 million.

Once FEMA reimburses the state of Louisiana it is the state’s responsibility to manage the funds, which includes making disbursements to local jurisdictions and organizations that incurred costs.
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Underwater Dam in Mississippi River Still Protecting New Orleans, Jefferson Water Supplies From Saltwater As Drought Continues

A $5.8 million underwater barrier completed in mid-September to block the upriver flow of saltwater in the Mississippi River from threatening saltwater-toe-imagearea water supplies has experienced some erosion but is still doing its job, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said Monday.

The 1,700-foot-long underwater dam, called a sill, at Alliance in Plaquemines Parish, keeps saltwater flowing upstream from the Gulf of Mexico from reaching the water intake pipes for New Orleans and Jefferson Parish.

On Dec. 12, the leading edge of the saltwater was at river mile 63.8 above Head of Passes, and was expected to retreat southward over the next few days, the result of additional rainfall that has fallen in the Midwest, combined with the release of water from several upriver dams that was required to allow barge traffic to continue moving on the equally low Missouri River.

A survey of the sill a week ago found a small amount of erosion in the center of the river channel, possibly the result of ship traffic above it, said Mike Stack, chief of emergency management for the New Orleans District office of the corps.

12006641-large“We will survey the sill every two weeks and keep an eye on the erosion,” Stack said. If the erosion gets worse, the sill may have to be replenished with sediment dredged from an area just upstream, he said.

Unusually long drought conditions in the Midwest have resulted in the extremely low river levels in New Orleans this year: since June 1, the level has been at 3 feet or above at the Carrollton Gauge on only 28 days.

Four of those days were before, during and after Hurricane Isaac, when the river reached 9.6 feet in New Orleans because of storm surge moving upriver from the Gulf, before dropping back to near 2 feet.

State Climatologist Barry Keim said the relaxing of La Nina conditions, marked by lower than average water temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean, should mean more rainfall in the Midwest in coming months. The ocean temperatures are now in a “neutral” pattern, about average, and are expected to stay that way through the Spring, according to a joint forecast of the National Weather Service’s Climate Data Center and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

drought-monitor

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State Touts ‘Across the Board’ Gains in School Performance Scores

State Superintendent John White heralded “across the board” progress for Louisiana’s educators on Monday, with the latest performance scores showing some kind of improvement at more than three-quarters of the state’s nearly 1,300 schools.
john-white-may2012.jpg State Superintendent of Education John White, shown in May, heralded “across the board” progress for Louisiana’s educators on Monday.

White said 163 schools earned an “A” in Louisiana’s new letter grading system, up from 98. And while the number of F schoolsacross-the-board jumped to 157 from 115 that was only because the state board of education decided to raise the failing bar. Had standards remained unchanged, White noted, the number of failing schools would have dropped to 70.

Among whole districts, which also receive performance scores and letter grades, seven earned an “A,” up from just one last year.

The latest scores show “the reforms are working,” White said, and that “educators and students are stepping up to the challenge in front of them.”

He also warned, however, that schools will have to continue improving results as annual assessments get tougher and Louisiana moves toward a more stringent grading system. Beginning next year, for instance, schools won’t get points in the performance score calculation for students who earn “approaching basic” rather than “basic” on state exams, and ACT results will figure into high school scores for the first time.

“Our tests are getting harder,” White said. “Schools will continue to have to up their game.”

One of the state’s biggest teachers unions, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, offered a starkly different interpretation of the latest results. The gains, argued LFT President Steve Monaghan in a statement, suggest the sweeping overhaul of state education policy undertaken by Gov. Bobby Jindal at the Legislature this year “were not as critical as proponents argued.”

Jindal’s package of education bills created a statewide voucher program, made it easier to open new charter schools and loosened job security for teachers, among other steps.

Of course, supporters of the governor’s approach to improving schools still see plenty of room for improvement. At the Department of Education’s press conference Monday Chas Roemer, a member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, noted that more than 200,000 students in Louisiana are still scoring below grade level.

The political battles at the state Legislature this spring were “worth the effort,” Roemer said. “BESE will continue to raise the bar on expectations. The results you see today are the result of two things: higher expectations and leadership in the classroom.”

 

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Plaquemines Ranks 5th in State With A

It’s official: Plaquemines Parish Public District is an A, according to the Louisiana Department of Education’s recent release of performance scores. The district now ranks fifth in the state.

“This is a celebration for people of this parish,” said Superintendent of Schools Denis Rousselle. “Our teachers deserve so much credit; they’re down in the
trenches everyday making a difference.”

Rousselle says that four years ago, one of his main charges was putting a certified teacher in every classroom and he feels that really “set the tone for what we wanted the district to become.”

Additionally, he says the forward progress of the district can be credited to businesses in parish who have donated their money and their time to ensure the
schools’ success.

“Through the support of the business community, we’ve been able to provide mentors for students and do things like hire instructional coaches to ensure all
of our teachers remain effective,” said Rousselle. “Hopefully they
feel as proud as we feel.”

Belle Chasse High, Belle Chasse Primary and Boothville-Venice Elementary received an A performance grade this year. But other schools throughout the parish also fared extremely well: South Plaquemines High went from a D in 2011 to a B in 2012; South Plaquemines Elementary and Phoenix High School both maintained C grades.

The new letter grading scale reflects a combination of individual student scores on the LEAP, iLEAP and End of Course Testing (for High School) as well as attendance and dropout rates, and graduation outcomes. These are combined to get the numerical score, which in turn, creates the letter grade. Additionally, the letter grades are calculated by a two year average of performance data to get a baseline average.

Based on 2012 performance growth, the state has identified “Top Gains” schools which are those that achieved their Growth Targets— a point value based on
the school’s score for the previous year. A school graded an “A” must grow by five points for the next year to become a Top Gains school, and a “B” graded school must grow by 10 points for the next year. Top Gains schools who meet their growth targets will receive monetary rewards to be used for any educational purpose.

SPHS, BCHS, BCPS, BVES and SPES are now what the state calls “Top Gains.”

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