Time To Get Real On Education Deal (Gwen Moritz commentary)

Sometimes taking a vacation just isn’t worth it. When I arrived back in the state recently, I found that the inert legislators who have dedicated themselves to preserving Arkansas’ abysmal educational system have declared victory even before taking up the battle. Gov. Huckabee is so frustrated he’s talking about canceling plans for a special legislative session in September.

These legislators have, presumably, read the state Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark Lake View case. They are well aware that most of the state’s children aren’t performing at grade level. And many of them represent areas that production-line manufacturing jobs have already abandoned for cheaper pastures.

Still they are aligned with the likes of Rep. Jimmy “Red” Milligan, D-Yellville, who declared that he would rather see two-thirds of Arkansas’ children continue to fail educationally than have one-tenth of them be forced into larger, better high schools. What he actually said was he’d rather see no school reform than support the governor’s proposed consolidation plan, but it’s the same thing.

With legislators like Milligan, it’s a good thing we have the courts.

My first inclination — to leave town again — wasn’t a viable option. So I reminded myself that “Baghdad Bob” also declared victory a time or two. At this point, claims by rural interests that the governor’s proposal for a comprehensive reform of Arkansas’ school system — complete with consolidation of school districts too small to offer rich curricula on their own — is doomed to fall into the category of propaganda. So do efforts to discredit the court-ordered adequacy study, which hasn’t even been completed yet.

I’m not persuaded that a majority of our lawmakers are so blind as to refuse to comply with the court’s order to create a constitutional system of public education. Even if they don’t care about this state’s children, I think they will have further motivation when they see just how far some of their constituent districts are from reaching the definition of adequacy and how much it will cost taxpayers to get them there.

Two-thirds of the state’s population lives in districts that are large enough to remain independent under the governor’s plan, and that majority won’t take kindly to the idea that they will have to pay even more in taxes to subsidize the inefficiencies demanded by the vocal minority. If Huckabee is forced to take the question of school consolidation to the voters, as Gov. Sid McMath did in 1948, he has a very good chance of getting a victory like McMath did.

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House Majority Leader Harmon Seawel, D-Pocahontas, recently made the ridiculous argument that Gov. Huckabee doesn’t understand rural Arkansas. Mike Huckabee embodies rural Arkansas.

It was barely a year ago that the governor was standing in front of small-town crowds and dismissing consolidation as part of the “Little Rock mentality” coming from people who have “never been out of Pulaski County.”

Then he read the Lake View ruling and, having sworn to uphold the constitution of this state, determined to do his duty and to sacrifice his political career if necessary.

Can Seawel or Milligan make the same claim?

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It seems appropriate that the Arkansas Educational Television Network recently premiered “Hoxie: The First Stand.” It reminds us that there was a time, albeit almost half a century ago, when there were elected officials in Arkansas who were determined to do the right thing for children.

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If Gov. Mike Huckabee can press on to his goal of satisfying the court and the constitution by achieving an adequate, equitable and efficient system of public education in this state, I promise not to squawk about adding a second, $750,000 governor’s mansion. And I won’t even make fun of his hair-splitting over whether it is nepotism to hire one’s brother-in-law.