To the editor:
In Barton County, our local state legislators vote against our local public schools.
If school boards decide to implement gun safety training in schools, they can choose the course material they think is best. Our local legislators want to take that authority away from our school board members. They voted to mandate that the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program must be used. Much like Joe Camel was used to indoctrinate young kids to be loyal to the Camel smoking brand, our local legislators voted to allow one of most powerful political lobbying organizations on the planet to use Eddie Eagle to indoctrinate our kids into loyal NRA supporters.
Our teachers spend considerable effort to review, study and recommend the curriculum that our school boards approve. Our local legislators want to take that authority away from our school board members. They voted to mandate that curriculum is whatever a parent says they sincerely believe. If a parent sincerely believes that the Holocaust did not happen, the school must exempt the parent’s student from learning that the Holocaust did happen and the school must give the student a history credit.
In Barton County, we have had school choice between public and private schools for 130 years. We pay taxes to support our public schools, but with that obligation we get to elect the school board members that run the school and the school must educate all students. We can choose to support our private schools not only as parents, but also as non-parents, primarily through our churches. Our local legislators want to take that choice away from us. They voted to mandate that some of the taxes that we pay must be routed to private schools. We would not get a say in how the private schools are run and, if a private school so chooses, our child might not be allowed to attend the private school.
The outcome of these three bills will be decided by veto override attempts and legislative action in this week’s final session. The legislature still has not passed a bill to fund schools as legislative bosses float proposals for more extreme parental controls and changing the court approved structure for funding schools.
We support our schools and want them to succeed. Not because we agree with everything they do, but because they are our schools. Particularly in our smaller communities, they are staffed and operated by our fellow community members that we know and elect to run them. Our local legislators vote against our local public schools. This is not the case with all current state legislators and it has not been the case with several past legislators that represented our county.
Our current local legislators are good and fine people, who seem confident that they know more about educating our students than teachers who have dedicated their lives to our kids and the community members that we elect to run our schools. They vote with political party bosses and the dark money political organizations they align with. We need common sense, moderate, independent thinking legislators who defy political party bosses and respect and vote for local control of our schools.
John Sturn
Ellinwood
