The Commerce news. (Commerce, Ga.) 1???-current, October 05, 2016, Image 4

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The Commerce news., October 05, 2016, Image 4

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Newspaper Page TextPAGE 4A THE COMMERCE NEWS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2016 Editorial Views Don't let state take over local schools While the ongoing campaigns of Hil lary Clinton and Donald Trump are sucking all of the air out of election news coverage, there is another issue on the Nov. 8 ballot that is arguably just as important for Georgia residents. It’s proposed Constitutional Amendment One, which would allow the state to completely take over schools deemed to be failing. Such schools would become part of an “opportunity school district” managed not by a voter-accountable school board, but rather by someone appointed by the governor and answerable to no one but the governor. Local school boards would have no choice but to meet the demands of the governor’s appointee in terms of facility use, personnel, student attendance and finances. In short, the state can take over any school that meets its definition of failure for three years, based on numbers from the College and Career Ready Perfor mance Index. Over 100 low-performing schools are subject to being taken over Jan. 1, 2017, if voters approve Amend ment One. Ultimately, the OSD superintendent has four options for intervening in fail ing schools. The superintendent can convert a school to a charter school to be run by the State Charter Schools Commission; he or she can directly manage the school; he or she can offer “joint governance” between the public school board and himself, where he or she has the authority to make changes to the school; or he or she can close the school. Neither the local board of edu cation nor the taxpayers in the school district would have any say in which of those options is chosen. There would be no public meeting in which decisions are made and the superintendent could make any struc tural changes or incur capital expenses — which would be borne by the local school district’s taxpayers. The OSD superintendent could, in effect, privatize a taxpayer-owned school Schools taken into OSD districts would remain under state control for 5-10 years, but if the superintendent chooses to make them state charter schools, local taxpayers would be responsible for them forever. The role of the local board of education would be to comply with the dictates of the superintendent None of the schools currently eligible to be taken over are local, but passing Amendment One sets a precedent that could be used to remove the public from public schools—without providing any guarantee that the OSD school will perform any better than it did before the state takeover. Both the Jackson County and Jeffer son boards of education have passed resolutions opposing Amendment 1. The Commerce Board of Education should do the same. Turning public schools over to one individual who answers only to the governor would create a stunning loss of accountability for communities’ most precious assets — their children. Unless otherwise noted, all editorials are written by Mark Beardsley. He can be reached at mark@mainstreetnews. com. The Commerce News ESTABLISHED IN 1875 USPS 125-320 P.O. Box 908 Jefferson, GA 30549 MIKE BUFFINGTON CoPublisher SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher Mark Beardsley. Editor THE COMMERCE NEWS is the legal or gan of the city of Commerce and is pub lished every Wednesday by MainStreet Newspapers Inc. Periodical postage paid at Jefferson. Georgia 30549. Subscription Rates Per Year: $25 POSTMASTER send address changes to THE COMMERCE NEWS, P.O. Box 908, Jefferson, GA 30549. GPB fall fund drive Hooked by They finally got me. After years of listening and making contributions during membership drives, I became a “sustaining member” of Georgia Public Broadcasting last week. Maybe it was the relentless fall fundraising event that “guilted” me into agreeing to let GPB debit my checking account monthly — forever, unless I act to undo the commitment. I‘ve supported GPB for years, always during its membership drives, because I value what GPB provides me in the way of news, entertainment and perspective, although virtually the only time I listen is while I’m driving. In Commerce, I can get WPPR in Demorest or WUGA in Athens, depending on atmospheric conditions. Seven ty-five percent of the time I can reach both, but 20 percent of the time only one comes in clear ly. Five percent of the time, neither one comes in clearly. I can’t watch TV news, and talk radio doesn’t provide news. All of the aggregators’ web sites carry the same stories, usually of some dramat ic shooting, fire or other disaster. Cable “news” provides not so much coverage, but commen tary on the news, and I want my news straight up from professional journalists, not someone attempting to sell me on a political philosophy. National Public Radio and its GPB affiliates provide reliable, objective coverage of inter national, national and state news, but it’s the in-depth and broad nature of their coverage that appeals. I hear interviews and reports that will It's Gospel According To Mark By Mark Beardsley never show up in the traditional news outlets, the 24/7 “news” broadcasts or in my Facebook feed. Almost as important to me are the book reviews and author interviews that influence what nonfiction I read. Currently I’ve got checked out from the Commerce library “Amer ican Girls: Social media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers,” by Nancy Jo Sales, a riveting but disturbing report on the effects of social media on the lives of girls ages 13-19.1 heard a Terry Gross interview with Sales on a segment of NPR’s Fresh Air without which I’d have never picked up, much less read, a book with that title. I’ve purchased or checked out dozens of books — all but one nonfiction — after hearing about them on NPR. I can’t think of a single NPR-influenced selection that I found boring or could not finish. NPR and GPB also provide a wealth of classi cal music. Come to think of it, my first exposure to classical music came because my mother listened to NPR as I was growing up. A UGA music appreciation course (part of a way then available to avoid the foreign language require ment) cemented my appreciation. Since most of my exposure to NPR/GPD is while driving, I rarely hear an entire interview, book review or musical piece. I miss the begin ning or the end, sometimes both, as I commute to and from work or run errands, but what I am able to hear is of great importance to me. GPB’s fall membership drive wound up last week. I hate the drives, and I’ve always avoided a commitment greater than whatever I was will ing to pay at the moment. Now that I’m giving every month, will I feel pressured to donate yet again during future fund drives? The NPR/GPB pitch is that sustaining sup port takes care of your obligation, but having a continual flow of money draining my account won’t exempt me from being subjected to the twiceyearly fund drives where I’ll be reminded of the cost of providing the programming I like. Supposedly I’ve done my part. When the spring drive comes along, I’m going to remind myself that those folks pleading for money really aren’t talking to me. I gave the month before that and the months before that... And it’s worth it. Mark Beardsley is the editor of The Com merce News. He lives in Commerce. A learning disability dilemma On a recent visit to southern California, I heard a lot of talk about the presidential campaigns. This wasn’t unexpected; many Californians find it interesting, rather than offensive, to discuss controversial topics and compare notes. But you don’t often hear them say things like “This can’t be happen ing!” or “How did we get here?" And you cer tainly don’t hear them talking about leaving the country! Southern California is historically a bastion of conservatism — home of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, the Russian-born Ayn Rand and Charlton Heston—yet people there are anxious about the upcoming election now: worried not that Tmmp may lose, but that he might win. No longer entertained by his antics or inspired by his pronouncements, they’re starting to say, “Uh-oh! Could he actu ally become the President?” He was anointed by the Republican Party as its candidate for the highest office in the land, and therefore given, sometimes grudgingly, the benefit of serious doubts — but now the doubts are gaining ground. I was pondering all this while I was visiting my son, his wife, and their two little boys. I loved being in their high-activity house hold, with all the chaos, hijinks, and hilarity involved in parenting small children. The turmoil, the ad hoc quality of their really quite organized lives, and the occasional rough- A Few Facts, A Lot of Gossip II By Susan Harper and-tumble of family life made me think back to my children’s growing-up years, and to my own — and to Donald Trump’s, too. Tmmp and I are close in age (I’m 72, and he’s 70), and when we were children there was no concept of learning disabilities: no language for dyslexia, or attention deficit dis order, or hyperactivity. Children who couldn’t read just weren’t bright, or weren’t trying hard enough; kids who couldn’t sit still were seen by their parents as badly behaved, and by their teachers, perhaps, as badly brought up. No one considered that they might be strug gling with a disability that they themselves didn’t understand. I had a sudden pang of sympathy for Tmmp, because it seemed to me that he probably suffered from attention deficit hyper activity disorder (ADHD), which of course went unrecognized and untreated, as did my brother’s dyslexia. Fmstrated adults probably lectured the young Donald Tmmp, yelled at him, and said things like “What’s wrong with you?” He must have wondered the same thing. Ironically, he had “every possible advan tage.” His family was able to send him to kin dergarten in a chauffeured limousine, dress him in the best clothes, and enroll him in mil itary school, where perhaps he would “finally learn to behave” — none of which solved his basic and baffling problem. So he grew up lonely, angry, mled by impulses, resistant to the slightest criticism, and unable to concen trate. It’s how he is to this day. These are not the traits we want to see in a leader of the free world, and I think that’s what southern California — and perhaps America — is realizing. But Tmmp’s is a sad story, if I’ve got it right (and I think I have), and although I could never vote for him, I will see him differently now, and with sympathy. Also, it has occurred to me for the first time, really, to wonder how many other such sto ries are out there, and — not for the first time — to appreciate the advances we’ve made in our understanding and treatment of children with learning disabilities. Susan Harper is a retired editor, lecturer, and local library director who currently serves on the Jackson County and Piedmont Regional library boards. What's wrong with reading? I like to read. In fact, I am a compulsive reader. I read the backs of cereal boxes and scrap paper I find. And I love books. Since 1971, when I first started keeping track, I have read 1,245 books. And yet, I don’t think that reading is a very worthwhile occupation. Overall, I think it ranks about with playing computer games - and for the same reasons: it keeps you seden tary, away from useful activity and away from interpersonal relationships. Many writers, whose livelihoods depended on readers, didn’t think too much of the activ ity either. Thomas Wolf and Ernest K. Gann both expressed the sentiment that reading was a very poor second to actual living. Sev eral philosophers claimed that you couldn’t learn philosophy from books. I am simply expressing the majority opin ion here. Particularly in America, and partic ularly among men, reading is for wimps. A man should properly spend his time hunting, fishing or driving his pickup (probably to hunt or fish). A man should have calloused hands and dirty shoes. He shouldn’t own a pair of reading glasses. It’s okay for women to read: they’re pretty wimpy anyway and you can’t expect much real work from a woman. But for a man, drinking beer is more worthwhile than reading. And to make matters worse, what you read in books is generally wrong. The heroes (at least they are active guys - you never read about a hero who spends his evenings reading) - the heroes perform their acts of dering-do and at the end of the book gener ally get the girl. But in real life the hero is the hedge fund manager who is able to pull a fast one on the regulators and makes off with a billion dollars. And he manages to get half a dozen girls. There’s no way that reading C.S. Forrester, Thomas Hardy or Joseph Conrad will prepare you for the real world. Actually, there is a class of writing that might really prepare you for life: the Icelandic sagas. Those tales were amoral. Really: they pre-dated Christianity and generally in the story everybody gets killed, the good, the bad and the indifferent. I don’t think they require reading “The Burning of Njal” in school, although that might prepare you for a life of clandestine regulation-avoidance. (It is interesting to note that the villains in Icelandic sagas were outlaws - just like in the Old West - and for the same reason: the government was weak and didn’t have the resources to track down malefactors. So it designated them outlaws, which gave anyone the legal right to capture or kill them. In fact, the Icelandic sagas are very much like the Old West stories: the outlaws were celebrated in exactly the same way. A man who could elude capture for years was highly regarded and became a folk hero.) Another problem with reading is that read ing advocates think that all reading is meritori ous. Certainly we recognize that there are bad movies, bad music, and bad paintings, but if something is written it must be worth reading. Would you say that The Iliad and The Duke’s Secret Concubine are equally uplifting? True, setting oneself in judgment on someone else’s book is a parlous role, but it is also true that some books have absolutely no merit. But my wife objects to dirty shoes and heavy work hurts my un-calloused hands, so I think I’ll sit down with another book. Willis Cook is a retired electrical engineer who was born in New Orleans and grew up in the Mississippi Delta. He lives in Franklin County.