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♦ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2006 4A Mouettm Gaily .ijuurtuxl OPINION Daniel Foy Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Foy S. Evans Managing Editor Editor Emeritus . An idea worth promoting Gov. Sonny Perdue announced Monday an initiative to place a graduation • coach in each of Georgia’s 450 mid dle schools by fall 2007. State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox almost immediately issued a statement supporting the move. “The governor clearly understands that middle school is a crucial time in a child’s education,” she said, “and wants to provide the support and the resources that students need to stay on the track toward graduation and success. As we continue to raise expec tations for all of Georgia’s children, middle school graduation coaches will help build those crucial relationships that keep stu dents engaged and on the right path. As superin tendent, an educator for 15 years and the mother of a middle school student, I think this is a great idea.” We couldn’t agree more, and in fact, this may be a better link to helping our children than his earlier incentive in establishing graduation coaches in high school. Our children at this age are either poised on the brink of transitioning to becoming a teen or are embroiled right in the middle of it. There are so many distractions - drugs, attraction to the opposite sex and on and on. At this age they are literally bombarded from every angle, every known direction - peer pressure is off the chart. Sometimes it gets the best of them, which is where a graduation coach can come in (among the many other possibilities). He or she can intercede, keep him or her on the right track or get him or her back on the right track and make a phenomenal differ ence in the end ... in the present tense and for their future. Letter to the editor Freezing value is fair way Foy Evans’ column in the Saturday paper contained a reference to property tax re-assessments and their impact upon the lives of our older and low-income citizens. He ref erenced a stabilization of property values for tax purposes. Several Georgia governments do provide such a mecha nism to control property taxes. Indeed, freezing a property’s value until it is resold is only logical and fair to all citizens. Once a property sells, the new owner pays taxes based on the sales price. The sales price reflects the true value of any property. Where such tax freezes have been imple mented, controls are in place to ensure that the reported sales price is the actual sales price. The state does require a re-assessment to reflect the “current market value” of property affected by the price freeze. In this case, local governments are required to hold two sets of books: One for the tax freeze value and one for the state’s “market value”. , The reason for this is that the state receives a .25 mill tax on all real estate. The current method of re-assessing a property’s value and then taxing at the new value is immoral and reflects a tax on unrealized profit. The property owner has received noth ing of value and is being taxed for it. Our county commissioners have, at one time or another mentioned a tax freeze and impact fees; however, they have never placed the matter on the agenda for action, much less discussion. The only way to provide tax relief for Houston County residents is to pursue impact fees imposed upon new development, increase building permit costs, and/or implement a county-wide tax freeze. Until we change the composition of the current board of county commissioners I believe that nothing will ever be accomplished to move beyond our current status. Fortunately, we have a county commissioner, Jay Walker, who is being opposed by Maurice Braswell in the Nov. 7 General Election. David E. Wittenberg, Kathleen Send your Letters to the Editor to: The Houston Home Journal P.O. Box 1910 • Perry, Ga 31069 or Email: hhj@evansnewspapers.com Wecouttftagreemore.and infact,ttiis.naybeabetter Rnhtoreacbingourcbldren thanhisearlierincentivein establishing graduation coaches in high school. Parents need to keep an eye on their kids « "■"know where your 15-year-old I daughter goes every Thursday JLat 4 p.m. I know who she goes with and I know what she orders there. I have her cell phone number, I know her full name, and I know she’s cute. I’ve seen her in a bikini.” “I know there’s a father of a student in this school suffering from depression. I know your daughter is very concerned about you, and I know the medication you’re taking. I know your first and last name. And while I’m glad you’re getting help, I doubt that you are aware that 100 million people have access to this personal information.” No, these are not the words of the Amazing Kreskin, trying to dazzle a crowd with mind-readingtricks. Instead, an expert in the online behavior of kids spoke these words at a recent seminar conducted by Georgia Family Council as part of a program called Play it Safe: A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety. It might help parents to understand why kids are drawn to personal content generation sites such as MySpace in droves. We believe it’s because they feel independent and grown up there since they are uncensored by adults. They are free to try out adult conver sation, using language and discussing mature subject matter, including sexual exploits, in a way most parents would not condone. In this environment, teens (and pre-teens) love to express all their thoughts, emotions and their creativity - as though they were before a cyber counseling panel of 100 million people. That’s one of this technology’s prob lems. MySpace and similar sites create a culture in which kids feel free to divulge too much information - the kind of information that can either embarrass them and their families, and the kind that can get them molested or killed. I know that sounds melodramatic, but even the major television networks have spent a great deal of time recently exposing the exploits of cyber-predators who patrol the Internet looking for kids who are vulnerable to their advances. The threat is real. But the fact remains that most par ents don’t have any idea what their kids actually do online. Nor do they under stand the content kids are exposed to. In just a click or two after logging in, young kids can encounter loads of "Hone.y, gas prices are down! Quick, go buy us an SUV!" Pill popping experience lasts all night long One pill makes you larger, And one pill makes you small. And the ones that mother gives you, Don’t do anything at all. “White Rabbit,” Jefferson Airplane OK, now I get it. Right ... non drowsy. The definition came to me about 3:30 a.m. I was wide awake (still), my legs the previous five hours moving like a “Chorus Line” audition, the tips of my fingers delivering enough energy to power a GE Soft White three-way. Spending a night jumpier than a Jack Abramoff golfing buddy in a grand-jury room seriously cuts into sleep. Like all of it. The Sandman had taken me out of his Rolodex - apparently too much twitching. Exasperated, I got up at 5:15 a.m. to exercise, hardly an hour’s shuteye under my belt. Sixty minutes later, on a stationary bike at the YMCA, my heart rate climbed over 100 percent capacity, surely the product of psue doephedrine sulfate or loratadine or both, rather than the required effort on my part. Like growing old, timing and balanc ing my drugs can be tough. My one-tab congestion relief experi ment from hell came after a sinus and allergy slap upside (and inside) my head. When my sinuses misbehave, I usually score some Tylenol and suffer (rarely in silence) or pound down a couple weeks’ worth of an antibiotic, the theory being a load of clarithomy- OPINION pornography and other sexual content, profanity, hatred (racial or random), and attitudes both subtle and overt that can begin to erode at a visitor’s sensibilities. So, what’s a parent to do? We offer several suggestions in our Play it Safe seminar and its accompanying guide (available on our website at www.geor giafamily.org. The first step is to find out where your kids are going when they are online. Ask them to take you to their MySpace account, and the major ity of teens have one. If they refuse, you may have a problem. They may already be involved in online behav ior you would not condone. And even if they agree, many kids have set up “shadow pages” - sanitized versions of their real pages, just in case a parent comes looking. After severed of our seminars, parents have come to us to say, “We have asked our son (or daughter) to let us see his MySpace page, to give us his password. He won’t do it. What should we do?” My first reaction is: “I don’t understand the problem. Who bought the com puter? Who owns the house where the computer is stored, and who pays for the Internet connection? Who feeds and clothes the child?” “We do,” the parents answer. “But we’re just not sure how he would take it if we push harder to get him to give us his password. He may just refuse again; then what do we do?” “It sounds like he has something to hide, doesn’t it?” I reply. They nod. Then I ask, “What does he enjoy?” After a confused look passes between mom and dad, they smile sheepishly and say, “He really likes the computer.” “Take it away,” I say. To which their eyes grow large in unison. “Really?” mom says. “If he won’t allow you to take simple steps to protect him, to parent him, to guide him, then you need to take more cin a day keeps the sinus infections away. Wednesday, however, I decided to give an over-the-counter remedy a try, consulting with a pharmacist and pro ducing the proper photo ID to buy the stuff. If I’m going to be up all night, I want to be legal. Somewhere between 1:30 and 2 a.m., I realized it’s good to read the package. That’s where I discovered that the medicine could cause nervousness, diz ziness and sleeplessness. Chances are good I was dizzy but just too nervous and wide awake to notice. The box also revealed a secondary issue, a concern - let me be gentle here - that has to do with men my age drinking a tumbler of water directly before bedtime. Yeesh! Wide awake and now this. It helps to pay attention, too. The pharmacist suggested an early morning dosing, lest it interfere with my sleep. Interfere, we 11... OK, but all night? Deciding to heal myself, I downed the little sucker about 1 p.m., staring blankly at the box, which screamed in large red type, “24 Hour.” Go figure. r~ r H lp Greg Hunter Columnist Georgia Family Council George Ayoub Columnist Morris News Service HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL drastic measures to let him know you are serious - and that you are still the parents.” Once parents have access to their kid’s password on MySpace and other sites, and if they determine that they will allow their kids to continue to have such accounts, we strongly urge families to adopt an Internet Behavior Agreement. This document is created by parents and kids together. They must sit down and write up their stan dards for acceptable practices online, including the following: Where, when and how long may the child access the Internet? Only in your home? Only when parents are in the house? For one hour a day? More? What kind of content is allowed? Perhaps you want to choose a few sites at first that are acceptable, then build from there if your child proves respon sible. What kind of content is not allowed? You must be very clear with this. One of our experts told the story of a mom who said to her son, “I don’t want you looking at pictures of naked women.” And she would remind him of that requirement regularly. This compli ant child obeyed his mom... and took to looking at pictures of naked men. Kids need to know your standards and they need to know why. Tell them how you want to protect them from the damage and scars left by addiction to pornog raphy, which, according to one report, effects the human brain much like drug addiction, and is often harder to break. With drugs, the user has to acquire the substance and administer it in a loca tion where he won’t be caught. With porn, the “drug” is already stored in the mind, with immediate access allowed by the power of human memory. These are just the first three points in the Internet Behavior Agreement that we recommend parents write with their kids. Next week in this column, we’ll share a few more recommendations for the Internet Behavior Agreement, along with some other alarming infor mation and statistics about what kids are doing online. Our purpose in this is to help parents become more aware and better equipped to prepare the next generation of husbands, wives and par ents in our state. To order your copy of the. Play it Safe guide, go to www.georgiafamily.org. Maybe it’s my physical infirmities firing my imagination, but it seems the older I get, the more pills I swallow. On the face of it, that would make sense. I wonder why, however, as the num ber of pills I need to pop goes up, the point size of the type explaining their potential problems goes down. On television, drug manufacturers, surely concerned about lawsuits from sleep-deprived lunatics, announce a medicine’s potential side effects, occa sionally a lengthy exercise or at least long enough to give you pause before knocking one back. The white pill with the numbers on it had some staying power, too. My regular large cup of coffee Thursday morning, its caffeinated properties obvious to the undrugged, was simply redundant in my system. True to its packaging, my psuedo ephedrine-loratadine buzz began to diminish in its 25th hour, a crash and burn I both longed for and dreaded. Of course, if I took another ... OK, who am I kidding? Next, I’ll be setting my alarm for a quarter past vampire. Besides, while the all-nighter king did dry out my sinuses and restore a semblance of normal breathing, I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson. And if I didn’t, I’m sure there is something I can take for it. George Ayoub is senior writer at The Grand Island (Neb.) Independent. His e mail is george.ayoub@theindependent. com. Read his blog, “A Shoe on the Freeway, ” at www.theindependent.com/ george