By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

BATON ROUGE – Louisiana teachers unions are setting an interesting example for the state’s schoolchildren: If you don’t get what you want, it’s okay to threaten, sue, and attempt to intimidate until you get your way.

A state appeals court Wednesday upheld a lower court’s ruling by refusing to halt a recently approved private school voucher program for qualifying children throughout Louisiana.

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That’s certainly good news for parents eager for better educational options for their children. But union officials continue to work hard to snatch those options away, and ensure that the thousands of students who might have benefitted from the vouchers remain locked in failing schools.

Their union lawsuit to halt the start of the program has failed thus far. But Big Labor is not giving up.

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers has vowed to appeal the recent ruling to the state Supreme Court, the Associated Press reports. And the Louisiana Association of Educators is now threatening to sue private schools that accept vouchers while the constitutional challenge is pending.

“While we are happy for Louisiana’s children that the ruling allows them to attend the school their parents think best, we find the kind of scare tactics used by the plaintiff to be shameful,” state Superintendent John White told the news service.

The unions apparently couldn’t care less that thousands of Louisiana students could be stuck in failing public schools for another year if their intimidation tactics work. Brian Blackwell, the LAE attorney who penned the threatening letter to participating voucher schools,  admitted that the unions’ focus is on the state money attached to each student. We’re hardly surprised.

He wants voucher schools to put the money received from the state into an escrow account or refuse to accept the cash until the self-serving lawsuit is concluded.

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“The real concern is with … (those schools that) receive the money and then spend it will not have the ability to repay it if the program ultimately is declared unconstitutional,” Blackwell said.

But with the first court date set for October, education reformers are questioning how voucher schools could educate their new transfers from public schools without using the state funds, the AP reports.

“I don’t see how they’d do that from a business standpoint,” Eric Lewis, state director for the Black Alliance for Educational Options, told the AP.