Baton Rouge billionaire Grigsby wants to take the "public" out of education

Grigsby

Right-wing Baton Rouge businessman Lane Grigsby has decided that public education is the "root cause" of all the state's problems -- even "the traffic that strangles the interstate around Baton Rouge during the weekday commute."

So while he opposes "throwing any more money" into public education,  he's created his own PAC so he can put millions of tax-free dollars behind conservative, anti-union candidates for the state school board.

He says he's focused on injecting "free-market principles" into what was once a "state monopoly" over public education. 

Grigsby refers to his favored candidates for the school board as "progressives," but in outlook, he's a classic conservative: a construction industry entrepreneur, a long-time supporter of Republican causes and a crusader against government waste who wears his religious faith on his sleeve. In the lobby of his office on Airline Highway, the 21 pieces of wild game he bagged on a spring trip to South Africa line the staircase.-- Times Picayune

State filings show Grigsby's Alliance for Better Classrooms, or ABC, political action committee, raised more than $250,000 between Sept. 13 and Oct. 11. Two days later, his wife, Barbara Grigsby, threw in another $100,000. Among the candidates receiving Grigsby money is Teach For America's Kira Orange Jones.  No surprise there.

Also see: 

Money pouring in for charter supporters -- AP Wire

N.Y. Times editorial, Lessons from New Orleans