Just a Graze

by Lorraine Collins

When I was a kid and went to Saturday matinees at the local movie theater, there was often a serial just before the feature, and these usually had cowboys exchanging gunfire. Frequently, just before the episode ended, the hero would be shot off of his horse, so we had to go back the following week to see what happened. At the beginning of the next episode, he'd pick himself up, dust himself off and say, "It was just a graze." That's how I feel about the Legislature this year. They didn't actually kill us all off, but the crease in our skulls might be slightly deeper than a graze.

Yet, it could have been worse. The only bill dealing with abortion this year just made some revisions in the bill passed last year, apparently in the hope to make it more defensible in court. Women and girls seeking an abortion are still required to go to a "pregnancy center" for "counseling", but now counselors have to be "licensed." The bill does not say licensed by whom, or what the licensing requirements are.

Teachers, firemen, and other public employees dodged a bullet when HB 1261, which would have prohibited collective bargaining by public employees, had a short life. Senator Stan Adelstein of Rapid City first proposed this but later he decided this was not a good idea, and said so. Senator Tom Nelson of Lead also abandoned a bill he had thought of introducing, exempting casinos in Deadwood from the smoking ban. It's always a good thing when Legislators realize that the Legislative session just isn't long enough to accommodate every idea that comes to them in the middle of the night or is proposed by a special interest group.

           

Nelson chalked up a victory for gambling, though, when he got the Legislature to  raise limits in Deadwood casinos to $1,000 from $100. I can remember when limits were $5 and folks said that our cozy little historic town would not try to compete with Las Vegas.

By far, the most controversial bill this year was HB 1234, introduced on behalf of the governor, who decided that he had a swell idea for improving education in South Dakota's public schools. This included eliminating "tenure" for teachers and offering thousands of dollars in bonuses for teachers who were in the top 20% of teachers in their schools, as measured by some method yet to be determined. Other bonuses would go to those who taught math or science. This was such an unpopular idea among teachers, school boards, administrators and the general public that the bill was argued about and amended several times. The bill that was finally cobbled together included scholarships for college students who promise to teach for five years in "critical needs areas", not just math or science, and offered some options for local school districts.

I heard a commentator on TV say that she thought the governor wanted to have a "legacy" and that's why he embarked on "educational reform". Personally, I think a great legacy would be to increase all teachers' salaries and lift us from the humiliating position of ranking last of the 50 states in terms of what teachers are paid. Coming up with money for bonuses for a few teachers and leaving the others at the bottom of the barrel doesn't sound like a good idea to me. School boards still cannot count on a sustained level of support from one year to the next, so they continue to cut budgets, drop courses, and lay off teachers.

But one of the more troublesome things about HB 1234 as far as I'm concerned is the provision that will end the "continuing contract" as is current practice in South Dakota. After this is eliminated, any teacher, regardless of how long she or he has been in a school system, can be fired and the administrator is "not required to give further process or reason for non renewal."

Due Process is one of the basic tenets of our Constitution. Due Process has been called "The Shield of the People" and it is also a shield for teachers who are professionals, who have chosen this career not just to make a living, but to make a difference.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@midco.net.

Adding up at year's end

by Lorraine Collins

Since this is the time of year when we start summing up things, writing Christmas letters, reflecting on how fast the year has gone by, I thought I'd get out the notebook in which I keep the stack of columns I've written in 2011 to see what they amount to.  There are fewer to review this year because in July I reduced my output to one column a month, inching toward retirement. There are just 16 columns instead of a couple of dozen but it still took a while to read through them as I tried to remember what I'd written about, and why. There were some lines I was quite pleased with when I read them again.

For instance, there's this one from the first column last January. In discussing expiration dates, I said, "How long is too long? That's the question, isn't it? Not only in food safety, but in life, love, professional football careers, reality TV shows, Royal Dynasties, and living in a hospital bed attached to tubes and a respirator." I think that covered quite a few issues, right there, but several months later I'd add Republican primary debates.

In an April column I started out discussing socks and ended up writing about the fact that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and that "the top one percent of the people have seen their income more than double in recent years while the bottom 90 percent have seen their share shrink." I don't suppose this was the first mention in the media of the infamous one percent, but I did suggest we should be paying attention to the situation. I suggested that again in October when I mentioned that there has been a big increase in needy families coming to our food banks and many people were beginning to gather in America's streets the way they had in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab Spring. You can't say I didn't warn you.

I think I was pretty early in recognizing Texas Governor Rick Perry as being a possible candidate in the Republican Primary as I mentioned him last June before his band wagon really got rolling. I pointed out that one difficulty with the governor was that he has said he wants to amend the Constitution to take away from the people the right to directly elect their U.S. Senators. He wants state Legislators to do this as they did in the old days before the 17th Amendment in 1913. I don't know why Governor Perry trusts state Legislators over the public, but I did point out that the first three words of our Constitution are "We the people," not "We the states."

From time to time I've enjoyed writing about adventures I've had, including spelunking in Jewel Cave and trying to get to Pierre in a small plane and landing on a highway, then hitchhiking to get to the Legislature. I wouldn't want to do either of those things today, but 30 or more years ago they didn't seem unreasonable or hazardous activities. I don't think it's caution so much as exhaustion that makes us think about not doing stuff as we get older.

I do tend to talk about issues that we should be thinking about, including how we treat, or fail to treat, the mentally ill and the number of South Dakota children whose fathers are failing to support them. And again this year, as every year, I have more than once pointed out that South Dakota ranks at or near the bottom in state support for public education.

 Just now, thinking about this, I looked in the collection of my columns I published last spring and found this, published in January 2007: "At a forum during the campaign for Legislature last fall, I asked the candidates whether South Dakota was always going to be so far behind in supporting education, in having the lowest paid teachers in the nation. Was there any hope? Amid laughter, I was assured that of course there was." That was five years ago. I hope nobody is still laughing.

Well, Happy New Year, everybody. Enjoy it while you can. The Legislature doesn't convene until January 10th.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com

Free public education

by Lorraine Collins

My daughter and family just moved from Norfolk, VA to Topeka, KS and though they seem to like it there, several things have been a bit of a surprise, including some fees charged by their school district. At a social gathering shortly after they arrived, a fellow remarked that he wondered how much free public education was going to cost him this year. Last year, he said, it was $500.

It soon became apparent that the school district has a fee for "textbook rental" and "technology" and other things. For my two grandchildren in second and fourth grades, the fees added up to $200. I went to the school district's website to learn more and was amazed to see the number of fees charged to students. Fees for a 7th grade class in "living skills" amount to $11.00 but 7th grade science is only $3.00. It costs $35 to participate in middle school sports. High school sports cost $45 and fees for science, art, music, business, debate, journalism, cooking, physical education, foreign languages and numerous other courses range from $11.00 to $33.00. As one who once supervised a high school newspaper and yearbook, I was really shocked to realize that to be on the staff of either publication in that high school, a student would have to pay $33 per semester.

 Although over many years I was involved in education one way or another---student, teacher, school board member---it's been a while since I've paid much attention to the current situation, except to scold the South Dakota Legislature every year about its anemic support of public schools. (Yes, we still rank last in state per-pupil funding.) But spending just a few minutes on line asking about student fees in public schools was an education in itself.

Last year a lawsuit in California complained that 35 school districts were charging students fees to attend classes in what is supposed to be a free public education. In Illinois a woman complained that her daughter would not be allowed to register for her junior year in high school if she didn't pay $290 in fees. This woman is suffering from cancer and her husband has lost his job. Fees in one New Orleans school averaged over $1,000 and a school in Georgia charged $152 to enroll in Advanced Placement chemistry.

Several schools charge fees for activities if not for classes, including in one case $1,833 for cheerleading and $400 for wrestling. Although there has been grumbling in some South Dakota school districts about the cost of co-curricular activities and the expense of bussing sports teams across the state to play a game, so far the idea of expecting students to pay to play volleyball or football doesn't seem to be something people are ready to accept.

There are some expenses for kids and their parents in attending public schools in many districts in South Dakota, including insurance for laptop computers the school provides students or the cost of taking an Advanced Placement or ACT test. Fees are often forgiven for low-income families who meet income guidelines for free or reduced price lunches. And of course every parents knows there are numerous expenses in sending a child to school, as indicated by the lists in discount stores of school supplies for each grade. Yet the idea remains--public education should be free.

In fact, free public education has been considered so important that it is enshrined in our American history and in many state constitutions, including that of South Dakota. Article VIII says it very well: "The stability of a republican form of government depending on the morality and intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature to establish and maintain a general and uniform system of public schools wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all; and to adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education."

Even though we rank last in state support of education, at least it's still free. But one school administrator told me, "The way things are going, it's hard to say how long that will last."           

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

            

Students and athletes

Writer Lorraine Collins of Spearfish offers her perspective on recent developments at Black Hills State University and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology regarding their new status in the NCAA. Her articles are published in the Black Hills Pioneer, and we thank her for allowing us to post them on Black Hills Monitor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not too long ago I was driving down the road listening to South Dakota Public Radio as I usually do and I heard a telephone interview with the fellow who had just been hired by the University of South Dakota to be their Athletic Director. USD had recently been approved by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to be a "Division I" school, and everyone seemed excited about that. This fellow had some experience in Division I schools, so he'd been hired to help USD go through the transition process to become a full fledged member in a couple of years or so.

One caller asked the new AD if he could expand the sports program to include hockey and the fellow said he wasn't sure because the NCAA required schools to have a women's sports program equal to men's and to offer equivalent athletic scholarships. After the long struggle to get Title IX enforced, I was happy to hear this. Later when I went to USD's website to check on things, I discovered that the university actually offers more women's sports than men's. Both men and women are offered basketball, track and field, cross country, golf and swimming and diving. The only thing men have that women don't is football. Women have soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball. I tend to believe that the university has to offer those four women's sports to try to equal the amount spent on football. But that's just a suspicion.

Since Black Hills State University and the School of Mines & Technology have both just excitedly announced that they have been accepted into Division II of the NCAA, I wondered how their sports programs shape up. So I visited their websites, too. BHSU offers more women than men's sports but SDSM&T offers an equal number. It's interesting that all of these schools, in making their thrilling announcements about being accepted into a Division of the NCAA, immediately said they were going to have to raise a lot more money. One report indicated that SDSM&T's scholarship funds will need to more than double from $500,000 to more than a million.

Being in Division I or II of the NCAA means that schools are going to have to concentrate their fund raising efforts on offering scholarships to recruit athletes. Whether this should be the priority for our state supported institutions of higher education is a good question. I was surprised to read a statement by the Athletic Director of the School of Mines saying that about 65% of the school's athletes are from out of state. I presume this means that about 65% of the School of Mines athletic scholarships are given to students from out of state. This is something that alumni and donors may want to think about when they are asked to support athletic scholarships. I hope that scholarships for science, art, music, mathematics, drama, education, English and the like do not suffer because everyone is pouring money into sports scholarships.

The NCAA has many rules and requirements, one of which is that member schools must have a fulltime Athletic Director, which neither BHSU nor the School of Mines had until they began to make application for Division II status. There will no doubt be a number of other costs associated with achieving full membership in the Division, including getting associated with Division II conference and competing with schools in other states.

If BHSU and Mines join the Northern Sun Conference, they'll be with schools from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. If they find their way to the Rocky Mountain Conference they'll be with schools from Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico.

I suppose the least we can do is congratulate the schools on meeting the challenge of NCAA membership, while hoping that the schools don't lose track of what they are supposed to be doing for students who are not athletes.

~

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

Who failed?

We were pleased to see the Rapid City Journal, which still seems to be struggling to find its niche in the expanding media marketplace, opine strongly against a closed meeting conducted by a “Finance Review Committee” of the Rapid City School District.

With all the changes at the Journal over the past 36 months, it’s good to see them sticking to their editorial guns when it comes to open meetings.

And then there’s the school district.

According to the Journal, a group of local leaders was selected by the school district to review district financial affairs and make recommendations to the board. That’s a smart proactive thing to be doing in these tough economic times. Dave Janak, budget manager for the district, is reportedly consulting with the committee and is quoted as saying that the committee is “an arm of our office.” Our hats off to these business folks taking time to help the school district.

We’ve often noted that it’s a whole heck of a lot easier to do business outside the view of the media and the public. But it’s dangerous for the institutions to work with that mindset – and even more dangerous for the public. That’s why we have open meetings laws. There are ample provisions for conducting closed meetings -- personnel, legal, and other sensitive topics – but invoking them should be rare.

Most troubling are the remarks by Superintendent Peter Wharton, indirectly quoted in the Rapid City Journal, that he has no say in whether the public is allowed into the meetings. It sounds to me like he may have shortchanged the committee on guidance regarding their work and how to accomplish it legally.

And committee chairman Dennis Popp says the group isn’t elected and doesn’t represent anybody. Usually, school superintendents and chiefs of police aren’t elected either, but they’re required to do the public’s business….in public!

A retired school superintendent friend of mine said it best when I asked him how many folks would likely attend a public meeting of a financial review committee: “Nobody.”

By closing the meetings, the district and the committee have caused us to wonder why.

The Journal quotes Popp as saying “we don’t feel it would be fair to give the recommendations to the media before the board.”

Mr. Popp should understand that the “media” are something of a surrogate for the public, and this is not an issue of fairness to the board. It’s about the law and conducting business within the healthy view of the citizens served by the school district.

Information and Ignorance

The following post was written by Lorraine Collins, a free-lance writer from Spearfish. We're always delighted to include her pieces in the Black Hills Monitor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was in my first semester as a college freshman, I took a psychology course in which, for some reason, we were given a questionnaire about our opinion of birth control. I hadn’t thought much about that and I really didn’t believe I had an opinion. However, one question was, “Should people who want birth control information have access to it?” I said yes. I was surprised when, according to the way the questionnaire was scored, this put me in the “in favor of birth control” bracket. I protested, saying, “I am in favor of information. That’s all I’m in favor of. Just information.”

Naively, I believed information was good and ignorance was bad. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would be in favor of restricting information. I had never heard of the Comstock Act of 1873 that prohibited using the U.S. Mail to provide birth control devices or information. I also didn’t realize that many states had laws banning birth control. In a subsequently famous case, Griswold vs. Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965 ruled against a law that let police enter a married couple’s bedroom to search for contraceptives. Most states began repealing whatever laws they had about birth control in the 1950’s or 1960’s but key provisions of the Comstock Act weren’t repealed by Congress until 1977.

I’ve been thinking about all this because of the recent report that 46% of South Dakota high school students have had sexual intercourse. They are doing this despite our efforts to promote abstinence through “abstinence only” education. This has caused a lot of comment lately, and a lot of concern. The state epidemiologist, Lon Kightliner, noting that nearly 17% of teenage girls in South Dakota have had at least four sexual partners, is alarmed about the spread of sexually transmitted infections.

I suppose there are several reasons why people object to sex education in the public school. Some think a discussion of such matters should be left to parents in their home. Some may feel that sex education will interfere with the doctrines of their church. Because morality is involved in sexual conduct, teaching about sex is a little different than teaching math or English. The teaching of codes of conduct has often been left to churches and parents and their private organizations. But “character education” has recently become a part of the public school curriculum, so apparently we now want schools to help us with developing ethics and moral standards in our children.

Including “character education” in all aspects of school life can certainly be a good idea, but what about offering information, too? It is a fact that a substantial number of children are engaging in sexual activity, whether we like it or not. A startling statistic widely reported in the press is that, nationwide, at least one in four American girls has a sexually transmitted disease. We cannot ignore such a statistic. Even when our kids do things we don’t want them to do, they still need our protection. They should know not only what the unintended consequences of sexual activity can be, but what their obligations are in preventing them. They should know that it is immoral and unethical to be irresponsible in any activity, including this one. We should not give children the excuse of ignorance. After all these years, I still believe that information is good and ignorance is bad.

Millage Goes Back to School

Long-time news executive Mark Millage is leaving broadcasting to head Kilian Community College in Sioux Falls. Millage has been with the KELO-land stations, based in Sioux Falls, for some 25 years, most of them as News Director.

KELO-TV is the flagship station for a network of transmitters that cover most of South Dakota. Millage was tapped from among more than 40 applicants to become President of the two-year school.

I don’t know a lot about Kilian Community College – or Mark Millage – but they both have good reputations. According to the news release posted by the college, the school was formed as a “joint venture” by Augustana College and two other institutions that used to be known as Sioux Falls College and the North American Baptist Seminary.

I met Tom Kilian in the 1980s when I was with South Dakota Public Broadcasting. He’s the long-time South Dakota educator for whom the institution is named. He is a class act.

Good luck to Mark Millage and Kilian Community College.

Read This Blog – Earn 50¢

The other day, the Arizona Daily Star reported that some students in “poverty-stricken areas” of Tucson are being paid up to $25 a week to attend classes this fall. The incentive is being paid from private versus public funds, and it's a scheme that appears to be embraced by some schools and the Tucson Education Association.

The idea is basically to keep kids from dropping out of school. Of course, any increased enrollments won’t hurt the school district or the teachers union, both of which would seemingly benefit. School enrollment is a big driver in state funding for schools.

The devil is in the details, and it’ll be revealing to follow this Arizona effort.

Of course, the really big bucks to lure young people are being offered by the U.S. Army. It’s their effort to offset continuing shortfalls of recruits. Proposed new incentives include a $20,000 bonus (if you join up quickly!); new recruits wouldn’t have to meet weight requirements, and Uncle Sam would accept more recruits with GED certificates rather than high school diplomas. Plus, the Army wants to increase waivers for medical and moral reasons or for individuals testing positive for drugs and alcohol. My personal favorite is the one where the Army, according to the Associated Press, would create a "more pleasant boot-camp environment."

Throwing money at these issues – in my humble view – is NOT the way to go. It provides only temporary relief at an enormous cost.

Can you say “Mandatory Universal Public Service”? All young people should be required to dedicate two or three years of public service in the Peace Corps, the military, or a similar selfless endeavor like the old Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s.

To my mind, this would be a far more sustainable program than the bottomless pit of monetary incentives that so many policymakers are quick to offer. Would such mandatory service have problems? Of course, but they are dwarfed by the quagmire created by a seemingly bottomless pit of trying to solve every problem with money.

Young people, federal and state government – and U.S. taxpayers – would all be the better for such a program.

Thanks for reading my blog. Redeem your incentive from the cable guy when he shows up on time!

Miss Wyoming -- A Class Act

I was delighted to learn that Jennifer McCafferty was tapped as "Miss Wyoming" for 2007. A resident of Laramie, where she's finishing her senior year as a Spanish major, Jennifer is a native of Scottsbluff, Nebraska. She's the daughter of Marty McCafferty and Kary McCafferty -- and granddaughter of good friends Jim and Naomi McCafferty of Whitney, Nebraska.

This is a beautiful young lady with great poise, as you might expect of a Miss Wyoming. She will represent her adopted state well in the Miss America contest. Jennifer has already demonstrated her commitment to worthwhile projects -- from expanding and improving upon foreign language education to raising funds for the Children's Miracle Network.

Jennifer was my guest on the “Live with Jim Thompson” radio show on Tuesday, July 24. The program aired on a variety of stations in the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. It’s also archived on the internet at the program web site. The interview with Jennifer McCafferty is about half way into the program.

As I expected, she proved to be a delightful guest. She'll be a formidible competitor in the Miss America contest -- and whatever she chooses to pursue beyond college. She is.....a class act!

A Class Reunion is....FUN?

I could hardly believe it. It wasn’t even MY class reunion. It was Karen’s. After leaving blessed Chadron High School in 1962, her classmates gathered last weekend (July 13-14) in Chadron, Nebraska for a reunion. They came from far-away places like Clackamas, San Diego and Fountain Hills. But mostly, they came from Chadron and the surrounding area.

“What’s your brother doing these days?”

“Are you still teaching?”

“Sorry to hear about your dad.”

“Yup, we’ve moved…..again!”

“Guess you didn’t hear about Gerald?”

“Norm and Sally plan to retire next year.”

The names and circumstances are always a bit different, but the conversations are almost contagious and the fellowship is heartwarming!

I long ago gave up wondering why some folks don’t enjoy class reunions. Lots of people – especially locals – choose to not attend them. I guess it’s a character defect that I have, but I thoroughly enjoy them. Always have – always will.

And it’s not just to reminisce about pranks of the past or revive memories of youthful friendship. It’s also an opportunity to pay tribute to those who’re no longer with us. The CHS Class of ’62 has lost six of their members. Nancy. LaDonna. Neil. Bonnie. Rex. Karen.

Reunions are also a time to finally get to know those other classmates that we never really knew very well. What a treat that is!

I rather enjoy catching up with school chums -- learning where they live now -- although few of them have endured the number of “Adventures in Moving” that Karen and I have survived. I’m still looking for a cuckoo clock that must have fallen off the U-Haul truck somewhere between Ames, Iowa and Stillwater, Oklahoma 35 years ago!

We’ve even lost a few pictures along the way. So….I’m more careful these days. To help ensure that photos from the Class of ’62 reunion are preserved for posterity (and anyone else who cares!) I’ve posted a few of them at:

www.photographs.galeymiller.org/school

I wonder whatever happened to Rich….and Joyce……and Shelly…..and Eric….and…