There has been an awful lot of buzz about a consolidated high school and bond issue in the past few months, and I have had a bunch of conversations with people about their position on offering a consolidated high school here.
I make no bones about it. I support a consolidated high school and have for quite some time. If you take time to research the performance of our school district, you will find that we are not performing to the level we should. This is not right for our children. The classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
That is what we have been doing in our school system for years. The biggest problem is that there is no longer the discipline and accountability there was when most of us adults were in school.
I suppose the thing I appreciate about the way the opposition is fighting this issue is the fact that they are trying to use the system to make changes. That is the way the system was established and how it should operate. They are entitled to their opinion like it or not.
Thomas Ray Floyd, who leads the opposition to the new school, shares information with me, sometimes unsolicited and sometimes not. We have carried his column over the years presenting his religious perspective. We have differed a bit in the past but it is not my place to interpret God’s word so we offer what he submits and allow our readers to be exposed and make their decision.
This week he shared some John Birch materials that advocate defunding public education, saying that it is beyond repair. It goes on to say that government should not fund public education in any form. It cites public education’s conflicts with Judeo-Christian values, and in many circumstances that is completely accurate. The information suggests that the public request that their legislators remove support from public education. We are told that this is happening right here in Simpson County.
What a step back for our community! The reason former Governor Winter pushed for adequate education funding is that some communities were not meeting their educational obligations to their residents. This allowed for the creation of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, MAEP. It has only been completely funded twice since inception during the 1980s.
What would happen if the government stopped subsidizing farmers? Farmers are now paid not to farm certain amounts of farmland. What if there was not a federal subsidy for highway programs? Many programs like community infrastructure are funded by the government. Public safety is funded by local, state and federal government. Should we defund the police?
The Birch group claims these subsidies are Marxist ideology and that this thinking is going to destroy the United States. This propaganda says, “Furthermore, public schools were originally created by-Marxist influenced individuals—to control the next generation and how it views the world.”
We say this thought process is completely flawed, but a lot of this type of information that is flowing around the county is coming from the John Birch website.
Granted, massive improvements are needed in our school system. Schools need accountability and improvement, but with no federal funding, all expense would fall to the state or the county, and those costs would be much higher than those that currently face Simpson County.
