Danae Columbus: Is LaToya Cantrell really Dutch Morial reincarnated?

Without really caring who she runs over along the way, Mayor LaToya Cantrell has been plowing through such issues as increasing revenues from traffic cameras and how to fund the city’s long neglected infrastructure. In watching her especially feisty style, I can’t help comparing Cantrell to one of my favorite mentors — former Mayor Dutch Morial.

By any standard, Morial was pugnacious and always ready to go to battle for causes he believed in – and there were many. The word “compromise” was often missing from his vocabulary. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it and would go to almost any means — including canceling Mardi Gras parades during the 1979 police strike — to reach his goals.

Education advocates put pressure on Sophie B. Wright board over student punishments

Parents and community members are calling on Sophie B. Wright’s school board chair to call a special meeting to publicly address what they say is overly harsh punishment of senior students, an advocacy group announced.

On April 5, about 30 students were given five-day suspensions from Sophie B. Wright Charter School on Napoleon Avenue after a senior prank water fight. The students also had their senior privileges revoked, including walking for graduation, senior prom, senior picnic and their last day of school.

According to an April 8 statement from the school, students vandalized the school with water balloons, water guns, eggs, vinegar and mustard. Sophie B. Wright officials have said the prank resulted in injuries and could lead to legal action.

Tulane study finds improved WIC food packages reduced obesity risk for children

By Keith Brannon, Tulane University

Sweeping changes designed to make a major federal food assistance program more nutritious for low-income families were effective in reducing obesity risk for 4-year-olds who had been on the program since birth, according to a new study by researchers from Tulane University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and PHFE WIC.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is among the first to use a rigorous research design to demonstrate the impact of major food package changes made by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, in 2009 on obesity risk and growth trajectories for different groups of children receiving the program. It is the most comprehensive study of the impact of these changes on obesity risk in Los Angeles County where over half of all children under age 5 are enrolled in WIC.