Lions and Eagles

I could have gone to an awards ceremony for Atlanta's professional theatres Monday night. Atlanta's version of the Tony's. With my wife representing Academy Theatre, she was dressed up and looking gorgeous, and she had two tickets, which included food and drink tickets for the bar. She went, and she brought a friend, and she had a marvelous time. I must be some sort of glutton for punishment. I went instead to go watch the Fayette County Board of Education steamroll over the objections of citizens, neighbors, experts, and even the government of Peachtree City. I went knowing that they were not going to listen to any more public input. I went knowing that their reasons and excuses were empty and full of contradictions. I went knowing that the only thing I would be able to do would be to stare them down. I sat through nearly an hour and 45 minutes of presentations. A presentation on the CCRPI indicators.(Summary: Even Fayette's "bad" schools are looking ...

Last night I went to a Q&A session with a couple of members of the school board for parents and members of the community. (I'm both.) Very nice event. Very glad I went out, and it was very encouraging to see the good turnout in the room. Steve Brown did a fine job of moderating, offering up questions gathered from parents via Facebook, and live audience had a number of questions as well. I have a few reactions to their questions.

PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS I'm going to have to do some jumping around here, but I'll make up for summarizing at the end. Items #1 and #3 are each standalone, but each of them has a bunch of story that is not being told on the ballot that has to be shared. #2 and #4 each seem to follow a pattern that I want to explore, to make sure that I can vote with principle and consistency, so that I can decide not just the question of whether this particular proposal is good, but whether this type of proposal is sound.

Last time I did one of these voting guides, I had some friends say, "Thanks, but we need one page we can just print off and take to the ballot box!" Well, here you go! Here's the quick list (along with links to get back to my reasoning, just in case you want to check my work).

Part three of this November's voting guide, now we tackle the ballot questions! Two Constitutional Amendments, one Tax! Unless I decide to wade into the Presidential race at some point later on, this will be the last of it. Please read on....

Now for the next race on my November ballot: Fayette County Board of Education:

Our Federal politicians love to talk about how much they support education. They talk about all the money they want to throw at the states for special education projects. And the price for states that want to take that money is, they have to comply with certain Federal regulations. But, per the Constitution (10th Amendment), education should be in the States' ballpark. Want to take a wag at how much of the education money spent in Georgia comes from the Federal level? 3%. That's right. Just 3%. Now, want to take a guess at how much of the overhead rules and regulations dropped on our teachers come from the Federal level? 90%. That's right. A mere 3% of the state's education money comes from the Federal government. And the price for that is, 90% of the overhead our educators have to deal with. At what point do we decide it's worth getting rid of the 3% to be free of the 90%? Just a thought.