Our view: Local people should decide local issues

04-20-2008

Should state Rep. Ken Guin, D-Carbon Hill, be allowed to add extra physical education classes at Talladega High School? Should he be able to determine what students in the Sylacauga School System eat for lunch? Or should he be allowed to mandate when the school year begins and ends for students in the Pell City School System? The answer to all of the above ought to be a resounding ‘no.’ But in this state, those are the issues being pushed by Guin and other lawmakers following his lead. Guin has introduced bills to require the state to review local school menus and make physical education a requirement in high school. His motives may be pure – getting the younger generation fit and trim – but he overlooks what it will cost school systems as a whole. Adding P.E. takes away from other subjects systems can offer, and it cuts students’ ability to take electives or participate in extracurricular activities because of other requirements. Reviewing school menus takes control of a lunchroom in Winterboro and puts it in the hands of bureaucrats in Montgomery. But when superintendents oppose the ideas, rightly reasoning that those decisions are their job, it looks as though retaliation is in order. Guin pushed for and got narrow approval this week for a resolution that requests the Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts to supply information to lawmakers about what superintendents make and how many people they employ in their central offices. Besides being a waste of time to retrieve what is already public record, it is merely a smokescreen, diverting attention away from the real issue. What ought to be the concern is that purely local issues – like when school starts, when and what classes to add to curriculums and reviewing lunch menus for their schools – ought to be decided by local people, not a lawmaker on the other side of the state. Guin and others who have joined his ranks should drop the nonsense and pick up on the pressing problems facing this state, like its economy. That’s the way to address the overall health of Alabama for the future, not by participating in what should have been nothing more than an exercise in futility.

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