Senator takes part in state education meeting

District 34 Sen. Francis Thompson met with Governor John Bel Edwards, Education Policy Advisor Donald Songy and Dave Spence of the Southern Regional Education Board in Baton Rouge.
Thompson sits on the Executive and Finance Board for Southern Regional Education Board, which covers 14 states in the Southeastern portion of the United States. The meeting was to discuss more opportunities to strengthen education in Northeast Louisiana parishes.
In recent months, SREB has worked to enroll Northeast Louisiana schools in training programs in an effort to build coalitions with those schools to improve the quality of education, teacher performance, student achievement, and higher test scores. In this meeting, the four discussed funding solutions for TOPS and other scholarship opportunities along with funding for K12.
The Southern Regional Education Board works with states to improve public education at every level, from early childhood through doctoral education.
They help educators strengthen student learning with professional development, proven practices and curricula. They help policymakers, institutions and educators share scarce resources to accomplish more together than they could alone.
SREB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization headquartered in Atlanta. Their 16 member states are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Senator Thompson has been a member of the SREB Executive Board for many years working to improve education in Louisiana.