What Price Success: A Louisiana Malady

Pigno recounts his own shocking experiences as a school superintendent in a small Louisiana town. Although names have been changed, What Price Success tells Pigno's true experiences with a sheriff, district attorney, teacher's union and community. An Italian-American, he was discriminated against because of his national origin and disliked because he used his education expertise to turn the school parish around. Although his district went from recording poor scores to earning ones above the national average, he was harassed by local law enforcement and teachers, who plotted to land him in a federal prison camp for 13 months. His first goal was to get the parish out of a federally mandated court order that had stood for 20 years. Instead of sticking with the longtime legal representation of the local district attorney, he and the school board hired a New Orleans-based law firm. "Strike one," he writes. Secondly, he hired auditors to audit local business to see if they were paying their taxes. They weren't. He sued those businesses for the back taxes, which amounted to almost $900,000. He also recommended that the school board begin collecting their own sales taxes, which would save $300,000 a year, the amount they paid the sheriff's office to collect these taxes. This was "strike two." The final blow came when Sal, the fictional name for the author, used local money to help fund teacher salaries, which would have been cut by the state. When the state didn't come through with the money the following year, the backlash was harsh. When he called a school bus driver before the board to discuss allegations of child molestation, tirades erupted. His so-called radical ideas and his Italian-American background shook the tree of the "Good Ole Boy" network a little too vigorously, landing him in the middle of a malicious plot.