(The Center Square) — The Louisiana Department of Education received approval this week for recipients of the Education Excellence Fund to spend a total of $23.4 million for the fiscal year 2024-2025.

According to the Department of Education, a total of $72.7 million was available in the Education Excellence Fund at the beginning of the 2024-2025 fiscal year. $11.6 million were new funds, $26 million were carried over from prior year funds, $41,000 were reallocated from closed schools receiving funds, $27.7 million were investment funds, and $7.4 million were cash on hand funds able to be spent.

The $23.4 million requested for approval is being used by school districts that have money left over in their fiscal year Education Excellence Fund balances. The money requested includes $15.7 million for instruction programs, $3.6 million for early childhood programs, and $4.3 million for approved educational programs.

The Department of Education approved the plans and now seeks approval from the Senate Committee on Education.

A report presented to the Senate thoroughly examined the money available to each parish/ organization and what they have left to spend from their Education Excellence Fund for 2024-2025. Bossier Parish and Caddo Parish balances were zeroed out.

For the 2024-2025 year, Caddo Parish reportedly had $1.49 million in their available funds with $77,344 cash on hand from previous years. The parish spent $1.36 million on early childhood programs.

After spending the money, Caddo had $209,884 in unbudgeted funds that carry over to the next fiscal year’s fund. Bossier Parish had $413,129 with $33,051 cash on hand from previous years. The parish spent $137,625 on instruction programs and $308,555 on approved educational programs. The parish did not have any unbudgeted funds.

Parishes seeking to use funds included Allen, East Carroll, Madison, Sabine parishes, and others.

The Senate approved the department’s request. A representative noted the department will now move forward and release the approved funds.

Another business discussed was Louisiana’s standing on the Nation’s Report Card, which is given every two years. The data measures 4th-grade and 8th-grade reading and math levels. Overall, in the past 10 years, Louisiana has moved up in these areas, with 4th-grade reading taking a big jump from 2022 to 2024.

Louisiana 4th graders are first in the country for reading growth for a second consecutive cycle. Louisiana is also in the top five for 4th graders’ growth in math.

Emilee Ruth Calametti serves as staff reporter for The Center Square covering the Northwestern Louisiana region. She holds her M.A. in English from Georgia State University and soon, an additional M.A. in Journalism from New York University. Emilee has bylines in DIG Magazine, Houstonia Magazine, Bookstr, inRegister, The Click News, and the Virginia Woolf Miscellany. She is a Louisiana native with over seven years of journalism experience.

(The Center Square) – The Texas Senate continues to pass bills identified as legislative priorities by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, with the most recent focusing on religious freedom.

The Senate passed a bipartisan bill Tuesday to put prayer back in public schools. SB 11, filed by state Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, passed by a vote of 23-7. It heads to the Texas House.

The bill would allow teachers and students, with parental consent, to opt into a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious texts during school hours.

“Our schools are not God-free zones,” Middleton said. “We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust.’ You have to ask: are our schools better or worse off since prayer was taken out in the 1960s? Litigious atheists are no longer going to get to decide for everyone else if students and educators exercise their religious liberties during school hours.”

Middleton thanked President Donald Trump and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick “for making prayer in public schools a top priority,” arguing, “There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in our Constitution, and recent Supreme Court decisions by President Trump’s appointees reaffirmed this. The goal of this bill is to promote freedom of religion for teachers and students in the place where they spend most of their time – school.”

The Senate is also poised to pass SB 10, filed by state Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, which would require every public-school classroom to post a copy of the Ten Commandments beginning in the 2025-2026 school year. The first two readings passed, the third was scheduled for Wednesday. If it passes, as it’s expected to do, it will head to the Texas House.

“By placing the Ten Commandments in our public-school classrooms, we ensure our students receive the same foundational moral compass as our state and country’s forefathers,” Patrick said.

In the last legislative session, the Texas Senate passed King’s bill, which died in the Texas House. Last year, Louisiana became the first state to allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools. The Louisiana law is being challenged in court.

In response, Patrick said, “Texas WOULD have been and SHOULD have been the first state in the nation to put the 10 Commandments back in our schools. Last session the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 1515, by Sen. Phil King on April 20th and sent it over to the House, to do what Louisiana just did.”

“Every Texas Republican House member would have voted for it,” blaming former Texas House Speaker, Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, with whom he had a public feud. He said Phelan “killed the bill by letting it languish in committee for a month assuring it would never have time for a vote on the floor. This was inexcusable and unacceptable. Putting the Ten Commandments back into our schools was obviously not a priority for Dade Phelan.”

Because of a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that a Washington state high school football coach had the First Amendment right to pray after a game, Texas and Louisiana filed their bills arguing they are constitutional.

After Louisiana’s bill was signed into law, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation for Church and State sued. A federal judge ruled the law is unconstitutional, prompting Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill to appeal and defend it against several challenges. The case is expected to eventually be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In January, Murrill issued a guidance for public schools on compliance on the law. It includes four parameters, including stating that displays of the Ten Commandments must be donated and not use public funds. Murrill maintains that the law is “plainly constitutional because there are constitutionally sound ways to implement it.” The guidance letter also includes a draft resolution that schools can use to adopt the guidance.

Roughly 20 years ago, on June 27, 2005, Texas won a legal challenge to a Ten Commandments monument being erected on the Texas Capitol grounds over whether it represented an unconstitutional establishment of religion. At the time, then Attorney General Greg Abbott defended the monument, arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that it was constitutional. He won and the monument remains on the capitol grounds.

Abbott, who supports the bills allowing for prayer in school and Ten Commandment displays, said on the anniversary of his win last year, “Faith and freedom will forever remain the bedrock of Texas.”

(The Center Square) – Butts County Sheriff Gary Long and Norcross Police Chief Bill Logan told a Georgia Senate committee Wednesday they are both concerned about safety around school zones.

But the two veteran law enforcement officers have different opinions about traffic cameras that record speeders.

A Senate Public Safety subcommittee is considering House Bill 225, which would ban the cameras. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Dale Washburn, R-Macon, who has previously called the cameras a “money grab.” The bill passed the House 129-37 earlier this month. The cameras were greenlighted by a bill passed in 2018.

Logan told the committee the cameras reduced traffic accidents from more than 2,000 a year to 1,200 in the 6.2 square-mile city he oversees. The revenue is used in his department for a variety of things, including two full-time mental health clinicians.

Long called the cameras “taxation by citation.”

“Right now it’s just policing for profit,” Long told the committee. “They can get all they want and a private company makes it. It just don’t sit right with me and it doesn’t sit right with my community that I’ve talked to that we have private companies that’s capitalizing on a criminal code section.”

Long has personal experience with tickets from the cameras, he said. His son was cited by one in Henry County. The sheriff said he received notice about a ticket written for a truck he had sold five years prior to the notice.

Washburn said previously he received a ticket because of one of the cameras, but that’s not why he was sponsoring the bill. Macon-Bibb County Government has collected $6.5 million since the implementation of the cameras, resulting in about $1 million for the camera company, according to Washburn.

Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, said he appreciated the large crowd that attended the three-hour meeting that began at 6 a.m., noting some did not get a chance to testify due to time constraints.

“I think we now have about six hours of testimony on these particular devices,” said Robertson, who is a retired law enforcement officer. “I’ll be completing my report and getting it back to Sen. (John) Albers post haste.”

Albers, R-Roswell, chairs the Senate Public Safety Committee.