More Safety Net

Originally posted in a LVRJ Forum

The Nevada constitution requires a "safety net". You know, mental institutions for the unfortunate FEW who are hopelessly bananas, and physical institutions for those thankfully small numbers of kids who were born seriously disabled. We can't cure them, but we can try to make their difficult lives as comfortable as possible. That's a very reasonable and humane thing to ask of people fortunate enough to avoid the same fate.

Public education was set up as a safety net, also. The committment is 1 school per district (18 statewide). Anything beyond that -- attendance rules also -- was left to the Legislature to decide. Public education was intended for kids who desperately want an education but whose circumstances are such that they have no other place to go. Very few kids fall really into that category.

If the crooked politicians -- who take money from special interests that leech off the public school system -- want to turn the Consitution on its head and make our committment a completely open-ended one, let them first get permission from the taxpayers in the form of a constitutional amendment. In the mean time, the legislature should deem those hundreds of other public schools unnecessary, and vote them out of existence. They should abolish ALL truancy laws. We shouldn't have to draft kids to go to school. We shouldn't be cheating generations of good students with McEducation. We shouldn't be ruining generations of bad ones with education quality unworthy of poodles in a poor circus act.