February 3, 2008 - February 9, 2008 Archives

I never understood the whole hunting thing. Traipsing around in the woods, suited up in camouflage, ready to take down whatever unlucky creature crosses your path. Yeah, the concept is foreign to me -- at least it used to be.

I’m by no means an active participant now. But after a close encounter with a deer one night that left my SUV in shambles and the hoofed animal in worse shape, I now understand the importance of population control for deer.

In West Virginia, however, at least one lawmaker is just as concerned about growing the population of prospective hunters and is looking at schools as a potential training ground.

According to the bill, seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders could take classes at school on everything from gun safety to survival skills. The guns would be disabled and loaded with mock ammunition.

Currently, kids as young as 10 can obtain a state hunting license after receiving training, which isn’t offered at schools now.

With school violence being such a national focus and trigger point, you’d think more people would have a problem with this, but even the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said they have no issue with a supervised instructional program.

“We let TV babysit our children,” the bill’s author, Sen. Billy Wayne Bailey told the Dover New-Philadelphia Times Reporter. “This is a way to teach them there’s a real consequence every time you pull a trigger.”

Who knows if the bill will ever make it off the floor, but if West Virginia legislators do manage to get this passed, it will illustrate one thing clearly: Every state has its own issues and priorities.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

There was a lot of sound and fury coming out of Washington on Monday in response to President Bush’s 2009 budget for children’s programs, but just what it signifies is hard to say.

“The president’s budget proposal, released this morning, confirms our worst fears,” said an Afterschool Alliance news release. It noted the administration would cut after-school funding by 27 percent and convert the $800 million remaining in the 21st Century Community Centers into a voucher system for after-school programs. An official from First Focus, a bipartisan child advocacy group, told CongressNow that the move would further destabilize after-school funding by making these funding sources more unpredictable.

First Focus also came out with its own rather alarming e-mail, saying the Bush cuts would include, among other things, a $700 million -- or 12.5 percent -- reduction in discretionary health programs that help children and a $640 million (38 percent) cut in child welfare.

“As the economy worsens, dramatically cutting child health, education, welfare and safety programs is not the answer,” First Focus said.

Scary? A little. But remember that Bush won’t be around come Jan. 21, 2009, the fiscal year begins in October (just a month before the presidential election), and the Democratic controlled Congress has no intention of making these kind of drastic cuts.

“He doesn’t have us over a barrel this year, because either a President Clinton or a President Obama will have to deal with us next year,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told USA Today. “We are not going to be held hostage to this unreasonableness of this president.”

He didn’t say what would happen under a President McCain.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

There’s been a lot of talk about what, if any, impact the youngest voters will have on the upcoming presidential election.

The older members of the Millennials, the generation born generally between the late 1970s and late 1990s, could be the swing voters, particularly in the heated Democratic primaries between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Millennials helped give Obama his wide margin of victory in the Iowa caucus in January, for instance. But younger voters also are the most fickle, and don’t always show up at the polls—even for this highly contested battle.

Political commentator Norman Orstein, who spoke at the National School Board Association’s Federal Relations Network conference this weekend, believes there’s one issue that could -- and should -- bring out this elusive crowd: government spending.

He pointed out that the candidate who ultimately wins will have to deal with a “fiscal headache beyond the migraine stage.” Looming deficits will have a major impact on the economy and are going to affect a lot of budgets, including federal education spending, he told the 300 or so FRN participants.

But ultimately, the Millennials will be the ones to pay the bills.

“Make no mistake about it, there will be tough times,” he said. “And if ever there was a time for young people to vote, it’s now, because they’re the ones who are going to have to deal with all our debt.”

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

How much work do you put into building a healthy relationship with your teachers’ union?

For an April ASBJ article on unions, I recently examined labor-management relationships across the nation and—and reaffirmed what experts have said for years: How well school boards and unions get along is as much about the people involved as it is about the issues.

Let’s face it: Some school board members just don’t like unions—or their union leader-ship. Others prefer to keep their distance and let the superintendent take the lead when it comes to the union.

I think that’s a mistake. Certainly you don’t want to intrude on specific matters best handled by the superintendent or through the collective bargaining process.

But, as one union leader suggested, school board members "need to establish a relationship with local teacher association leaders. There’s a lot of us-versus-them mentality out there. But sometimes, on both sides of the fence, quite honestly, we need to be working a lot more on relationship building and trust building."

If you think about it, that makes good sense. The more people know about one another, the more likely that trust and understanding can be fostered. That can make a huge difference when the next round of contract talks begins—and some difficult issue arises.

Wishful thinking? I don’t think so. Sure, there are union leaders out there who are stub-born, difficult, and embrace the us-versus-them militancy that plague some school systems.

The same can be said for some school board members, too.

And it can’t hurt to try. I talked to one school system where school board members and the union president meet one-on-one occasionally over a cup of coffee—just to stay in touch . . . just to share their thoughts and dreams for the school system and its children. It seems to work for them.

In fact, it sounds exactly how school board members take a leadership role in their school system. Which suggests that it’s time for you to pick up the phone—and invite someone out for coffee.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

I don’t look for these things, I promise. I just seem to stumble upon them … with great frequency. So here’s another one to add to the growing list of legislative absurdities.

This one comes from Tennessee and the mind of state Rep. Stacey Campfield, who apparently is a font of sound ideas. Last week, he filed a bill that, if passed, would prohibit public elementary and middle schools from providing “any instruction or materials discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality.”

Campfield said he threw the proposal into the hopper after learning the National Education Association had approved a resolution recommending sex-ed classes in schools include the diversity of gender identification and sexual orientation issues.

It was apparently too revolutionary for Campfield.

“I think the schools should stick to the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. And maybe some civics,” Campfield told the Memphis Flyer.

Gee, thanks for including civics into mix. Perhaps, the good lawmaker should brush up more on this subject, since his proposal would infringe on the powers of local school boards, a conflict that did not go unnoticed.

“Why does [Campfield] feel the need to take control of what’s taught in a school system away from local boards of education and away from local communities?” asked Earl Wiman, president of the Tennessee Education Association in the Memphis Flyer.

Of even bigger concern Wiman said, was the alienation the bill could fuel among gay students and their parents. “We have such a high adolescent suicide rate, and a large number of those killing themselves are struggling with sexual orientation.”

I’ll say this for Campfield: if anything he is consistent. A few years back, he proposed issuing death certificates for aborted fetuses and then in 2005 caused a ruckus by equating the state’s Black Caucus to the Ku Klux Klan because they wouldn’t allow him to join because he is white.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor