politicalcivility.com Blog

Our blogger discussion this morning with the Lt. Governor left me with a nagging question: What does fully funded look like in education?  The Lt. Governor talked about the record increases in public education funding in the state over the past two years and highlighted the nearly $600 million increase to occur this year.  In total, education has seen an increase of 45%, according to the Lt. Gov’s numbers, yet all I hear and heard during the voucher debate was that education is “underfunded.”  So my question to state office of education is what does fully funded look like?  Please just give me a dollar figure.  If it’s not $7,500 per pupil, what’s the number?  The follow-up question is this…If we get public ed to fully funded, what are you committing to deliver for our investment?  What can I hold you accountable for?  And if you don’t live up to your end of the bargain, can we close you down and send our money to those schools who are now giving a better education for less?

A thought from my boss, Paul Mero:

“Libertarians love liberty.  Conservatives love freedom — that combination of liberty and virtue conforming to the moral order.”

Here’s a bit more coverage on the conservative roundtable held at Sutherland yesterday with Ed Feulner as host.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/254090/155/

A bill up at the state legislature currently proposes to change the makeup of the state school board, which I favor.  The current bill is not one that will work for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the sheer size of the board, which will create an unruly body.

What about the following changes to the board?

1. Keep the same amount of board members at 13. 
2. Create four governor appointed members who rotate as chairman for 1-year each; these members will serve a four year term
3. Establish appointed members qualifications as follows: 1 member from the homeschool community, 1 member from the charter community, 1 member from the public school community, and 1 member from the private school community.
4. Create 9 generally elected members based on districts drawn up by school-district boundaries, meaning you couldn’t split a school district; these members will serve a two year term.

Just my thoughts on the issue.

It is always great to listen to really smart people.  Sometimes when you get into the grind at work, you forget how good it feels to stretch the mind.  I think it’s one of the things I miss most about MBA school, that being bombarded with new ideas and new concepts.

Anyway, Ed Feulner, a co-founder and current president of Heritage Foundation, spoke at Sutherland Institute today.  The guy is amazing in his ability to absorb information.  He was in AZ yesterday speaking to a group, and tomorrow he heads to Los Angeles to make another speech tomorrow, and yet he was completely up to speed on what Sutherland was engaged in and knew all those involved with the institute.

With respect to his remarks, I think the one that stuck out the most was the need for “intermediate” institutions to help foster civil society: family, church, schools, and of course my favorite, local policy organizations.  Our recent trend in Utah and across the nation is to weaken these intermediate institutions and solely rely on the state, which ultimately give us the all the bad government we deserve.  Let’s push our legislators and local elected officials to push legislation that puts decision making back in the hands of “we the people” and our intermediate institutions.