Robichaux Gets High Praise on Policies

Outgoing Orleans Parish School Board Chairman Thomas Robichaux is receiving lots of supporting email for his policy changes to keep out the teaching of young earth creationism in the Orleans Parish schools. Danielle Dreilinger writes:

District 7 residents gave sitting Orleans Parish School Board president Thomas Robichaux only 3,072 votes out of 14,688 cast in November's election. But Robichaux is floating out of office on a national wave of support from anti-creationism advocates, who have sent him over 2,000 emails and faxes praising largely symbolic policy changes he championed that take religion out of science and history classrooms. In fact, Robichaux got so many messages he contacted the American Humanist Association, which had issued an action alert, to ask its supporters to stop.

For those of us that saw this as a very hopeful sign, Ms. Dreilinger then rains on our parade:

The national excitement seems to overlook the fact that the policy affects only six of New Orleans' 80-plus public schools - the ones run directly by the Orleans Parish School Board. It isn't even a change: None of those schools teaches creationism, administrators said in November. The district's dozen charters don't have to abide by the policy, and neither do the three quarters of the city's schools that are in the state-level Recovery School District.

On the other hand, given the level of local support that creationism ordinarily receives, we'll take what we can get.