By Rebecca Burk / L’Observateur / April 29, 1998

A license plate that will help support public schools is being sold by the state of Louisiana, and St. John the Baptist Parish School Board member Russ Wise was first in line to buy.

Wise’s plate number is 21. The first 20 plates were saved for senators, hesaid.

Wise said the first available plate might have been sold to state Superintendent of Education Cecil Picard, but Picard already had a license plate of some sort supporting another organization. So Wise got out hiswallet and bought the first one for himself.

Wise said the plate cost $59 and is one of the more expensive ones that support an organization. That’s because $25 from each plate sold goes to aspecial fund to buy books called Books for Schools.

The fund was set up to purchase books because many parishes are having some difficulty getting all of the textbooks they need to accommodate all of the students, he said.

“But we don’t have that problem in St. John Parish,” he said. “We have allthe textbooks we need.”Wise thinks the program couldn’t have begun at a better time.

“This is something we have needed for a long time,” he said. “We havespecial plates that help all the universities and organizations like save the black bear and save the radish. It’s time to save public schools.”

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