Protect the right of local voters to decide how local schools will operate.

By Donald C. "Don" Wickham

Since 1978 most financing for schools comes from Sacramento and Washington D.C. Now those who provide the money want to take virtual control over local schools.

Now the second shoe is starting to completely drop as school budgets, school curriculum and school evaluation become major topics of debate before the legislature and in statewide elections and voter propositions. Although many proposals such as the UNZ foreign language (Prop 227) and school vouchers initiatives are popular with many voters, remember that every statewide regulation imposed on local schools reduces the power of local voters to decide how their own schools will be run. Your local schools are now faced with a multitude of state mandates and proposals such as Prop. 8's "Educational Czar."

At the rate all of these proposals are coming out of Sacramento it may well be soon that your local school boards will have very little to say over how your schools are operated. Essentially everything will be decided and administered from Sacramento. If you read the newspaper headlines on October 18, 1998 about the French students rioting and setting fires, they were protesting the poor condition of their schools, all of which are directly managed from the capital, in Paris.

Our district's first Superintendent, Edward Hyatt, said "Free Schools Make a Free People." With the coming regulation from Sacramento (and Washington D.C.) I am concerned just how really free our schools are going to be.

My involvement with the County and State School Boards Association has permitted me to become a strong advocate for local control of our schools. I have gone twice to Sacramento to discuss school issues with our legislators.