During the 1980 presidential debate, Ronald Reagan turned to Jimmy Carter and said, “There you go again.” Today, this phrase can appropriately be directed to the administration and board of education in School District 49.The July 2004 issue of The New Falcon Herald featured an article entitled, “Supporting the School District – Duty or Burden.” In this article, we learn how disappointed D 49 administrators were that voters turned down a 2003 mill levy override. Assuming that growth issues alone would be reason enough for voter approval, the administration attributes the blame for the NO vote to “voter apathy.”According to outgoing superintendent Mark Maksimowicz, we voters do not, “realize the country was founded on an education track – the same track all of us came through.” I guess his public school history class failed to educate him about the rich tradition of private and home schooling, which existed long before government run schools.Reading on, we learn that D 49 resident Al Green believes the D 49 taxpayer is in the process of “absolving ourselves from our obligation to society.” Excuse me? When parents make the choice of putting our children in alternative schools and placing limits on tax funded government run schools, we are abandoning our societal obligations? I don’t think so!While I am not opposed to the funding of public education, I am opposed to the delivery of that education in the one-size-fits-all monopoly of government-run schools. Therefore, I have in recent years adopted a standard practice of rejecting calls for more tax dollars for public education.If the brain trust at school D 49 wants more of our money, they may wish to consider offering something in return, like possibly, real choice. Less crowding in the schools would be nice, but not if the education delivered in those schools is simply more of the one-size-fits-all approach we see so prevalent in government run schools. If I am going to provide more of my money to the public school system, I want a wider variety of choices in how my children and grandchildren will be educated.But I won’t hold my breath. The education establishment has continued opposition to vouchers as well as other forms of choice shows that, despite their repeated claims that the district has great families, they do not acknowledge those same great families’ ability to make adequate choices regarding the education of their children. Indeed, it would appear that the only value of great families is to provide more tax dollars in support of whatever the government run establishment has decided is the single way of delivering education.This fall, School District 49 will once again ask the voters for a mill levy override. I ask the people of the Falcon community to avoid the trap of considering this issue strictly within the context of the challenges associated with growth. If enough of us join forces to deny additional funding to the government school monopoly, we can pressure the teacher unions and the school boards they elect to drop their opposition to school choice and competition.John Vander MeulenFalcon
