Lord, I feel really sorry for these students. They are going to have to spend several hours a day on a miserable school bus. You know, they need to force the school board members to make the same ride these kids face. They should feel the horrendous sentence they've fostered on these kids. They would sing a different tune if they had to ride a school bus several hours a day.
I really hope that Ron Crawford, head of a group that fought the Paron closure, pursues that lawsuit. Sitting on a bus that long is cruel and unusual punishment! It's torture! There's laws against that!
Well, this is good! Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas' 2006 Republican candidate for Governor, said today in a press release that, as Governor, he will require the state Department of Education to set reasonable standards for bus rides for students living in rural and Delta communities.
Speaking to the El Dorado Civitan Club, Hutchinson also urged the Dept. of Education to move forward on a study of isolated schools and the impact of excessive transportation times, which was mandated by the Arkansas Legislature over a year ago but has yet to be undertaken.
I wonder what Mike Beebe's thoughts on this are?
Story
Asa's Press Release
2 comments:
http://www.bentoncourier.com/articles/2006/05/11/opinions/48voped.txt
Paron folks not just stubborn; they happen to be right
My kinfolks are scattered everywhere in this part of the country. As far as I know, though, I don't have anyone that claims me in Paron.
Still, I find myself siding with residents there in this little set-to with the Bryant School District, the state Board of Education and all the others who want to sweep their complaints under the rug. I didn't feel that way before the state board meeting Monday.
Our editorial Tuesday urged everyone involved to let bygones be bygones and get on with their lives. That's not necessarily bad advice in general; sometimes we all get sideways with someone we disagree with and have trouble letting it go.
This is a case, however, of everyone feeling bad about closing Paron High School and being embarrassed by their inability to do anything to help, so they try to treat their own discomfort by declaring that it's time that Paron people get on with their lives.
Here's the problem with that attitude:
No one is listening to what the Paron folks are saying about their biggest (and most legitimate) complaint: how the long bus rides are going to affect students and their families.
I know for sure that no one listened Monday.
The first issue has been about money (of course). Though I suspect there are issues there that we could get into, I'm not going to do so because (a) I know nothing about successfully handling money; (b) I know less about writing about money; and (c) I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a lot like the victors in war being the ones to write history - if you annex the smaller school district and get the gold from the state, you can pretty well make the books look like you're in tough shape, no matter what anybody else says. I don't know if that happened in this case, but I know that I don't know enough about it to say so.
When you get to the second issue in Paron's case, though, I see something else. Lawyerman Chris Heller, representing the Rural Education Preservation Alliance, which sprang from Paron supporters, kept hammering away at the possible damage that such long bus rides are doing to Paron students. What I see after that is a big void ... nothingness. And I hear ... silence.
Nobody has answered it yet.
We had state Board of Education members clucking their tongues and saying how unfortunate the whole thing is, but they explained their upcoming vote by saying how they have to do what's best for the children.
When Heller complained that the study ordered to determine the effects long-distance bus travel will have on children in isolated districts had not been done, we heard the Department of Education's mouthpiece, lawyerman Scott Smith, squawk that the Department of Education officials have assumed that they were to do the long-distance bus rides study for the Legislature's 2007 regular session.
Guess what, folks! When you're closing schools left and right (two were closed by the state board Monday), it doesn't matter much what's in a study released a year after you've made your move.
Remember, now, Gov. Mike Huckabee wants to be able to tell Republican primary voters in the 2008 presidential campaign how he cleaned up the antiquated school system in Arkansas. So, the key here is to get this consolidation done and locked up tight.
If the children are what's truly important ...
€ Bryant School District wouldn't be holding various tryouts and elections at Bryant while proposing 3.5 hours of daily bus rides for Paron students;
€ Department of Education staff members would have completed the long-distance bus rides study when it's needed instead of waiting until most of the isolated district schools are closed and the document can be buried by the governor's presidential campaign;
€ The state Board of Education would have ordered that the study be done when it would help children instead of nodding while listening to a lawyer whine in defense of all the bureaucratic heads at the state Department of Education, then rubberstamping what he wanted done.
One board member, Dr. Ben Mayes, showed some courage by speaking out about the problem. He went so far as to drive the different distances from one school to another to get a sense of what the children might be about to go through.
When he said that the problem needed to be fixed, the other board members and that pesky lawyerman for the D of E all nodded, but murmured: "But that's not our job."
If protecting children from the abuse of bean counters and educational bureaucrats doesn't fall upon the Board of Education, who IS going to protect them?
Mike Dougherty is city editor of the Benton Courier. His column appears Sunday and Thursday.
doughertywriter@yahoo.com
You have made some excellant points. I totally agree that in the midst of the debate the children are being ignored.
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