Time to Follow Huck?s Lead
by January 20, 2003 12:00 am 66 views
Sounding at times like a conservative Republican and at times like a liberal Democrat, Gov. Mike Huckabee on Jan. 14 proposed a sweeping reorganization of the state’s school districts and of the executive branch.
Showing more political courage and bold leadership than we’ve seen from him in some time, the governor said what needed to be said. What he is suggesting will make some legislators uncomfortable when they hear from school administrators, state workers and parents back home.
But all of us should be far more uncomfortable with our current education system and the many lists in which Arkansas brings up the bottom. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Maybe, just maybe, the governor has shown us a way out with the proposals he presented to the 84th General Assembly in his State of the State address.
What is needed now is a Legislature that won’t cave in to the special interest groups that surely will attack nearly every proposal — lawmakers that will, as the governor said, be willing to lay down their political lives for our children and our future. We agree with the governor that the problems are neither Democratic nor Republican problems. They are real but not insurmountable.
To adopt the governor’s bold plan will call for steely courage, but the time has come to do the right thing — or wait for the courts to do it their way.
Getting the most attention in the governor’s address, of course, was education. The governor’s call for consolidation goes beyond what anyone expected in reducing the number of school districts from 310 to a maximum of 116. Although it falls short of the logical solution of one district per county, the governor’s proposal goes far enough to gain control over our crazy quilt of school administration.
Districts with 1,500 or more students would be allowed to continue as “unified” districts. That would include 76 districts, representing about 300,000 of the state’s 450,000 students.
About 25 or 30 regional districts would cover most of the remaining students. There would be about five or six “isolated unified school districts” covering large geographic areas. Nearly all schools covering grades K-8 will be allowed to continue in existence.
The governor said it cannot be justified for a school to have 10 football coaches but not one teacher to competently teach chemistry. We couldn’t have said it better.