BATON ROUGE, LA – Today, the Baton Rouge Alliance for Students Action launched a campaign
to hold East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools accountable for how it has spent more than $220 million in federal funding it received since 2021. The money, which came from federal pandemic relief bills, was intended primarily to help districts
address the learning loss that students have experienced throughout the pandemic.
“Transparency and accountability should be the cornerstone of our government,” said Adonica
Pelichet Duggan, Chief Executive Officer of the Baton Rouge Alliance for Students Action.
“EBR Schools received a once-in-a-generation taxpayer-funded sum to help our children recover
from the learning impacts of the pandemic. In the ensuing months, they’ve spent or encumbered
the entire amount, but other than combing through individual recordings from the many board
meetings at which expenditures were approved, there’s no simple way for community members
to track how the money was spent.”
The Alliance used public records to track down details on how the funding has been spent and
has published it via an interactive dashboard on its website found at
BRAllianceAction.org/Transparency.
“The district has repeatedly said that its outdated accounting system doesn’t allow it to provide
the public with timely fiscal transparency. We’re launching this campaign to demonstrate that
transparency and accountability can and must be provided for our community today,” Duggan
continued. Our dashboard tracks the spending as best as possible based on publicly available
data, but there are still many unanswered questions for which parents and voters deserve
answers.”
The Alliance will work to keep the website up-to-date with the latest information as it becomes
publicly available