Sen. Page Cortez's bill to stop charter schools from getting dedicated tax revenues from the Lafayette Parish School System should have been an easy sell to his fellow lawmakers, but there was one problem: the number assigned to his bill also happened to be what the Bible calls the "number of the beast."
"I think I would have been better off asking for a substitute bill just to get a different number" - Sen. Page Cortez
Sen. Page Cortez's bill to stop charter schools from getting dedicated tax revenues from the Lafayette Parish School System should have been an easy sell to his fellow lawmakers, but there was one problem: the number assigned to his bill also happened to be what the Bible calls the "number of the beast."
Senate Bill 666, Cortez tells The Daily Advertiser, "was doomed from the start by the number."
And he may just be onto something.
According to the report, Cortez's bill - which was filed on behalf of Superintendent Pat Cooper to keep $3 million of the $26 million in annual tax revenues received by the school system from going to charter schools - encountered bad luck from the start:
During the committee hearing on SB666, the power went off. The sound and recording system then quit working and when it finally came back on, testimony in the House of Representatives meeting two floors up in the Capitol came booming through the speakers instead of committee testimony.
Cortez's fellow senators became fed up with the troubled bill and wanted to kill it. After some pleading from Cortez and Cooper, a second chance was granted followed by an amendment from the Department of Education, which would have kept the bill alive had it not been for a lack of time.
"There's just too many moving parts to this issue," Cortez tells the Advertiser. "At this point, 666 is likely dead. I think I would have been better off asking for a substitute bill just to get a different number."
Read the full story here.