Athletic Supporters to Discuss New Gym with Public

The group advocating a 5.83 million dollar bond issue to build a new gym for high school sports in Madison is holding a public forum tonight at 7:00 p.m. in the middle school gym. Last week's blizzard pushed the State Debate Tournament to today, so I'll be in Yankton coaching instead of coming to participate in local democracy. I offer the following list of questions in the hope that some of my loyal readers might bring them up at the public forum and get back to me with some answers. Before we as a school district go another six million dollars in debt, I'd like to get some answers to the following questions:

1. Why are we considering spending 5.83 million dollars on a new gym when the school board is trying to save 30-40 thousand dollars by cutting a music instructor?
2. Is there any chance we could lower the debt burden on taxpayers by charging a user fee through ticket prices?
3. Why have the supporters of this project chosen public funding as their first option rather than private fundraising?
4. Given its economic development justification, can this project win funding from the Lake Area Improvement Corporation or the Forward Madison initiative?
5. Does the 5.83 million dollars include covering the maintenance costs of the building over the next 25 years?
6. Will increased attendance at sporting event generate sufficient revenue to pay for the building's upkeep?
7. Will the school district have to make further cuts in staff and programs for students to cover the increased costs of heating, cleaning, and maintaining this new building?
8. Has anyone compared the economic impact of building this new gym with the potential impact of other possible district uses of this money, such as increased teacher salaries (better recruitment and retention of teachers?), increased staff levels (more permanent residents in the community?), or increased classroom space (more construction jobs, plus educational benefits for kids?)?
9. Will the project money go to local contractors or out-of-town builders? In other words, how much of the project money will be sunk directly back into the local economy?

I'll be watching my e-mail and the local press for answers to those questions.

Teachers Deserve More Money? Sort of, Says Legislature

Our leaders in Pierre have managed to find four millon dollars to pour into increased teacher pay. Get out your envelopes and pencils: $4,000,000, divided evenly among about 9000 teachers, that's about $440 per teacher. That raise would bring South Dakota's average teacher pay to $34,500, still $2100 less than the average teacher pay in Mississippi, still rock bottom nationwide. (Have math fun of your own: play with the NEA's Education Statistics!)

I know, HB 1171 just creates a pilot project, and surely the state will find more money for the project as it proves its worth. But read the fine print. This measure is not an acknowledgment that South Dakota doesn't pay its teachers enough. This pilot project will not simply reward teachers something closer to the pay they deserve for the hard work they already do. There will be no across-the-board increases (so the above calculations only apply to determining the statewide average impact, not the actual benefits any specific teacher will enjoy). If teachers want more money, they have to jump through more hoops, doing more projects outside the classroom to "improve education." In the eyes of the legislature, it's not enough that teachers "improve education" by busting their chops in the classroom, the theater, or the gym. They have to do more, which, if I know my administration, will probably take the form of vacuous "graduate" classes in education and conferences that will take away from contact time with students.

Now let me be clear: an employer paying a fair wage has a right to ask employees to do more work to earn more pay. This legislation establishes clearly that our legislators think that, for the work they do right now, teachers deserve $2500 less than their counterparts in North Dakota, $5000 less than their counterparts in Iowa, and $13,000 less than their counterparts in Minnesota. (It shouldn't be hard to figure out why Sioux Falls has trouble recruiting qualified teachers.)

Note to My Superiors: Meetings Make Us Dumber!

In a poetry class back at university, my prof decided to be trendy and have us work in groups on a big project. A friend of mine in the class turned to me and rolled his eyes. Both of us had great contempt for group activities. We had individual learning styles; we knew we had always learned best working alone, at our own pace. Whenever our teachers stuck us in groups, our intellectual efforts were constantly compromised by the emotional effort of navigating the artifical social dynamic (and usually, when teachers put kids in groups, they deliberately impose some arrangement that breaks up the natural alignments kids would choose naturally). We couldn't pursue ideas as they occurred to us; we had to wait our turn, address whatever came up on the group's agenda. But given that "cooperative learning" was the big thing on the educational reform radar, teachers in every institution, even at the university level, where profs are more immune to the machinations of the education industry, started throwing their kids into groups to prove what innovative educators they were. My friend and I saw the flaws in cooperative education, and we promised in that poetry class to someday write a book: Saddled with Idiots: Cooperative Learning and the Rule of Mediocrity.

That book hasn't materialized yet, but a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that our complaint against cooperative learning is not just the whining of two smart-alecks in the back of the room. As reported on MSNBC, brainstorming in groups actually produces fewer results than brainstorming individually:

People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests.

Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.

The results may bode well for advertisers -- buy ad time during big events like the Super Bowl, and you'll get more impact when your ad plays in front of people watching an event together -- but the study also suggests that the unavoidable groupthink of meetings limits creativity. Researcher H. Shanker Krishnan, marketing prof at Indiana University, says that the discussion that naturally arises in groups crowds out brainstorming for different ideas. He also speaks directly to learning styles. The MSNBC article continues:

Another contributing factor is variation in learning and memory styles. People store and retrieve information in myriad ways, so in a group situation, the conversation could cause individuals to think about the cues differently than they would if they were alone.

Krishnan said individuals, whether students, executives or football fans, should take time to consider the facts on their own before coming to a consensus.

Dr. Krishnan's research squares perfectly with my experience in staff meetings and teacher in-services. I have yet to experience a group activity where I have come away with more knowledge and tools that I can apply to my curriculum and coaching than I can produce working on my own. My most productive in-service days are not those when I am stuck in a group or listening to some self-proclaimed expert, but when I am given those precious opportunities to hunker down in my classroom and work on my own. I'm free then to seek input and collaboration if I choose, if such cooperation presents itself organically in the flow of the work I'm doing, but I'm not hindered by the social dynamics that interfere with my creativity and concentration.

Our in-service speaker back in August told us that if we do anything in our classrooms that's not backed by research, we should be sued for malpractice. Now I have research to show that putting us teachers in groups at in-services dumbs us down. I don't plan to sue, but I will get a copy of this study and keep it handy at school. I hope my school administrators will do the same.

South Dakota to Pay for HPV Vaccine

The South Dakota Senate voted yesterday 33-2 in favor of funding human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines for all girls age 11-18 who want it. The House passed a slightly different form of the bill last week 61-9; now off to conference committee and quite likely the governor's desk. The bill is blessedly straightforward: no intrusion in the doctor-patient relationship, no requirements for certain official statements to be read about promiscuity or abstinence, not even any income guidelines, just a straight-up commitment from the state to protect public health. The bill also does not mandate the vaccine; it leaves the choice to parents. Imagine that: the Legislature respects both the wisdom of medical professionals and the freedom of choice of parents and their daughters.

Of course, Roger Hunt voted against this measure. Surely he expects that with the passage of this bill, all those teenagers who've been terrified of getting cancer from fooling around will all race to the nearest backseats and get busy fornicating. Fortunately, the vast majority of our lawmakers -- even Hunt's puritan pal Rep. Howie -- recognize the absurdity of the argument that the fear of cancer has been keeping kids abstinent. Now if we could just get the legislature to find funding to provide more health care to all of its citizens. Hey, Governor Rounds! How about funding the maternity costs for every South Dakota woman?

Gutless Wonders -- SD House on Minimum Wage

The good news: after a couple failed attempts, a bill increasing the minimum wage is making its way through the South Dakota Legislature. Even smiley Governor Rounds took time out from touting his buddy Governor Huckabee for President to testify before the House State Affairs Committee today in support of SB 207. Ah, it's good to see that our Republican-dominated legislature can show some real progressive leadership...

Oh, wait -- sorry, I must have been dreaming. The bad news: In a display of legislative spinelessness, the House State Affairs Committee unanimously passed an amendment to make the bill's enactment entirely contingent upon federal passage of comparable legislation. As South Dakota Retailers lobbyist Shawn Lyons said, "We'll go lock and [sic] step with what's happening on the federal level but we don't need to be out in front of the train."

Right. South Dakota sure wouldn't want to get out in front of an issue and show any leadership. We'd rather wait for the federal government to take action and, in the meantime, pass gutless legislation that Rounds et al will happily take credit for, even though it by itself does nothing but waste space in South Dakota Codified Law.

Snowstorm Shuts Down Schools; Teacher Gets Family Time

No journalistic objectivity here -- it's snowing! Hooray! The Madville Times loves snow! Winter has procrastinated and piddled around this year. November and December were mostly brown. I didn't wear my longjohns to work until January (hmmm... there are times when journalistic full disclosure maybe isn't necessary). We didn't really get enough snow on the ground for snowmobiling until the middle of this month. Even the somewhat worrisome snowstorm that came through last weekend wasn't all that bad -- I had some slip-and-slide on my way across Sioux Falls, but driving home from judging the Rushmore District National Qualifying Tournament in the wee hours Sunday morning, the visibility was fine, and the roads weren't too drifty.

Not so this fine day. Winter is finally doing its job, bringing the sort of disruption and adventure that snow days are all about. Montrose let the kids out shortly after lunch, and I followed themclosely out the door, driving home in full white-out conditions. After making into my driveway on the second pass (I scooted right by on the first), I couldn't see my house until I was within a hundred yards. Days like these make me a happy Jeep owner.

Snowfall has fluctuated since I got home. Nice fat flakes continue to pile up. The east wind has subsided, but I suspect that only means its getting ready to switch around to the north and really whip up trouble.

Some people hate the snow. But given my choice of weather events, I'll take the disruption of a good blizzard over any other kind of storm. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods -- they're no fun! I can fight a blizzard with my shovel and my four-wheel drive... but I don't have to, not right now. I can sit on my couch, play with the baby, and watch the land and lake and sky disappear in the great soft white.

Oh yeah, and if this keeps up (and KELO's Scot Mundt just said today's snow is a precursor to the major storm coming tomorrow!), I'll have some more blogging time. Katarzyna and I both say "Hooray for snow!"

Local Ideas, Local Arts -- Gotta Have 'Em!

I note with great pleasure Madison Daily Leader owner and publisher Jon Hunter's return to his own editorial page. After months of ceding the editorial slot to reprints from other newspapers, Mr. Hunter has reclaimed his rightful place as the regular editorial voice of Lake County's only daily newspaper. I apply "Be a yokel, buy local!" to my news and opinion as well. When I open the Leader, I want local content, especially on the opinion page. Mr. Hunter may tread more carefully than I in his prose -- I don't expect any calls for revolution from South Egan Avenue -- but I'll take his measured comments on life in Madison and South Dakota over borrowed out-of-town editorials any day.

And in tonight's editorial, Mr. Hunter strikes a similar tone in support of local fine arts. Given all our fancy electronic media, he notes that "relying entirely on entertainment from far away causes us to miss some great opportunities at home." School bands and other local musicians, painters, sculptors, and dancers -- like Jon Hunter, we may not produce the flashiest or most famous work (not yet, at least!), but what we produce is unique, and it is ours, part of a tradition of fine arts one might not expect from our little bump on the prairie.

But Mr. Hunter points out that this tradition is jeopardized by declining support from the fiscal powers. He argues that such budget cuts are not the result but the cause of declining participation in arts programs. In fine Hunterian form, without pointing his pen at any specific entity that should take action, he calls for everyone to promote local fine arts to encourage children and adults alike to get interested.

I'll take Mr. Hunter's well-timed suggestion to a level of specificity he perhaps feels ill-suited to offer: Let's turn the proposed new gym into a genuine events center, with dedicated spaces for the performing arts as well as sports. Or better yet, with sports moving to the new facility, let's convert the old gym (old here meaning about a dozen years old) into a theater complex (to replace the current theater, which is forty years old). No, not just rig up some curtains and a platform, but totally renovate the space. Install a permanent stage, curtains and fly system, state-of-the-art light and sound system, set shop with big loading doors, and new acoustic walls to change the gym from an echo chamber to a genuine theater. Create new storage areas for props, costumes, lights, and musical instruments. Dedicate some permanent display space (if not an entire gallery, then some bright display cases in the lobby) for exhibits of local art. Wall off a portion of the gym, break it into a couple dozen soundproof practice rooms for our musicians.

$5.83 million dollars is the gym's current price tag. The bond promoters tell me that's $89 a year more in taxes for my family; multiplied over 25 years, that's $2200. Before I "donate" my $2200, I'd like to see how we might make that money serve the broadest range of activities. Before the April 10 election, let's turn some artistic minds loose on the plans and see how we could put some of that money toward promoting the arts alongside athletics in Madison.

Call Me Orwellian... Please!

From Russell Baker's Preface to Animal Farm (which my freshmen are studying right now):

...Orwell, of course, was seldom happier than when he was attacking fraud and hypocrisy and hearing the squeals of the injured.

Despite his insistence on being "political" in his work, Orwell's career suggests his politics were the sort that real politicans detest. Why, for example, was Orwell so determined to make the case against Soviet communism at precisely the moment all proper people preferred not to hear it? Devoted socialist he may have been, but he had none of the politician's instinct for trimming sails to the wind when it is expedient to tell people what they want to hear. Worse, he insisted on telling people precisely what they did not want to hear.

He was that political figure all politicians fear: the moralist who cannot bear to let any wrong deed go undenounced. As a politician he had the fatal defect of the totally honest man: He insisted on the truth even when the truth was most inconvenient.

District 8 Reps Join Majority, Respect Property over Religion

The House Local Government Committee today killed HB 1227, which would have banned alcoholic beverage licenses within four miles of Bear Butte State Park. Our local reps, Republican Russ Olson and Democrat Dave Gassman (say, how'd we end up with both of our reps on the same committee, anyway?) both voted with the majority to defer the bill to the 41st (i.e. non-existent) day of the legislative session.

Opponents of the bill say the no-booze-sales zone would infringe unjustly on private property rights. Others seem to be hiding behind the local control issue (which is an increasingly popular albeit wimpy and inconsistent way for our legislators to avoid expressing their outright opposition to an issue).

While I appreciate property rights arguments, this issue seems to revolve more around the right to make big money on the rally than around the sanctity of property. Frankly, this teetotalling atheist would have been more than happy to see this ban imposed out of respect for religious rights. Bear Butte is sacred to a major portion of the population of this state, sacred in a much deeper, more fundamental way than any church is to the typical South Dakotan. The alcohol our ancestors brought over has caused all sorts of problems for the Lakota et al; why insult them doubly by permitting more establishments selling this destructive substance near one of their holy places? The good people of Sturgis have plenty of places to buy alcohol throughout the year, and the fatality reports from the Sturgis rally each year have yet to list lack of access to alcohol as a cause of death.

Of course, the insult to worshippers at Bear Butte goes beyond mere alcohol. The booze licenses only facilitate the plans of entrepreneurs like Arizona businessman Jay Allen, who started building his "Sturgis County Line" establishment at the base of Bear Butte last March with the intent of providing 30,000 guests at a time with "hundreds of acres to party… in a safe haven, free from a policed environment, that’s what I’m talking about! … over 150,000 s.f. of asphalt for semi-tractor trailors… 22,500 s.f. of… ice cold beer… kick-butt music & oh yea, hot hot women!" (quoted at Bear Butte Int'l Alliance; Allen's own website seems to have adopted tamer language). How many towns on this side of the state would tolerate a biker bar, promoting not just intoxication but violent behavior and exploitation of women, operating within sight/earshot of the local Lutheran or Catholic church?

I'm willing to stay out of the way of people engaged in their holy rites; I wish the whiskey-profiteers (and our legislature) held religious rights in similar regard.

HB 1293 Trumps Trigger Law

KELO-TV notes that HB 1293 (version 2.0, the Larry Long Hoghouse Mix) supersedes SDCL 22-17-5.1, the existing statute that triggers a nearly total abortion ban the moment the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. See HB 1293 Section 9 for the relevant amendment.

Health Insurance for Everyone? HB 1169/SB 132

More hoghousing (remind me to teach the kids this word when we do Student Congress in March and April): The State Affairs Committee last Friday tabled a couple of measures (HB 1166 and HB 1170 intended to make it easier to get and keep health insurance in South Dakota. They then hoghoused HB 1169, a "carcass" bill with no specific provisions but an enactment statement calling for a version of the Massachusetts plan to require everyone to have insurance, penalize those who don't buy it, and help the poor get it. State Affairs didn't create any requirement to buy insurance (which still strikes me as the wrong approach, like passing a law to solve hunger by requiring everyone to buy food), but instead rewrote the bill to authorize the creation of the "Zaniya Project Task Force" (Denise Ross at Hog House Blog informs me that zaniya means "good health" in Lakota) charged with creating a plan, complete with timelines, cost estimates, and funding sources, providing health insurance to South Dakota's uninsured. If this measure passes (and the Senate has its own version in SB 132), the task force will have until September 30 to compose and present its report.

I'm for less talk and more action, but on a complicated issue like this, we need to do some serious study and consider how to help all South Dakotans. The bill mandates at least two lay people be named to this task force, so hey! Governor Rounds! Pick me! You're going to need an advocate for a single-payer plan on the panel, and I'd be honored to serve.

HB 1293 -- The Hoghouse Remix

"Scream real loud!"...that's what Pee-Wee told us to do whenever we heard the Word of the Day. Today's Word of the Day: hoghouse: (v.t.) a procedure occasionally used in the legislature whereby a committee or a member from the floor will move to strike everything after the enacting clause of a bill and insert in lieu thereof the substance of an entirely new bill.

HB 1293 has been hoghoused, so commentators beware; we have a somewhat different battleground. Compare the original version with the version that emerged from the State Affairs Committee today, and you will find a number of significant differences, courtesy of Attorney General Larry Long, who was enlisted to rewrite the bill into more legally defensible language. My wife listened to the hearing online (archived at SD Public Broadcasting) and found fascinating. I find just reading the differences between the bills illuminating:

1. The opening "findings" have been cut from 13 to 5.
2. All talk of mothers' rights to a relationship with the unborn child and the benefits of pregnancy (hypocrisy from the original bill's authors, who were euphemizing their real intent, codifying the obligation to carry a pregnancy to term, if not laying the groundwork for an obligation to get pregnant) has disappeared.
3. The second-opinion requirement is gone.
4. Rape victims are not required to report their rape to the police.
5. Before performing an abortion on a victim of rape or aggravated incest, the doctor must report the crime to the state's attorney or other law enforcement in the county where the crime occurred or, if that information is not known, the county where the patient makes the report to the physician.
6. The bill's name is changed from the "the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act" to the "Prevention of Abortion as Birth Control Act." (Well, at least we're being a little more honest.)
7. If passed, the bill goes straight to a public vote in the 2008 general election.

While I appreciate seeing some of the Newspeak removed from the bill, I'm still bothered at how AG Long doesn't hand out the new bill text until today's committee meeting, before opponents have a chance to research and prepare arguments.

And there's still plenty to oppose. The state continues to presume to judge the nature of the doctor-patient relationship. The state maintains the paternalistic assertion that women risk their health by undergoing abortions, when good science has failed to demonstrate any increased risk of psychological trauma, and when childbirth, according to a physician who testified at today's hearing, poses to the mother 12 times the mortality risk of having an abortion in the first trimester. The state suggests it knows better than doctors how to take care of women than trained medical professionals and intrudes on the doctor-patient relationship.

Finally, the state continues to expend great amounts of energy crafting and debating abortion legislation when it could do much more tangible, quantifiable good by working education, health care, energy, and a host of other issues that could make life better for every living person in the state. (And we commentators are just as guilty of directing so much hot air toward this one piece of legislation.)

If HB 1293 -- The Hoghouse Remix ("Aaaaaaaahhh!" Remember, kids, I told you scream real loud!) -- passes, maybe the only silver lining will be that it won't go into effect until the voters get a swing at it for 21 months, meaning that next year's legislature will have cleared its plate of the abortion issue and will be able to concentrate on bigger policy issues affecting the pocketbooks of all South Dakotans.

But obviously, we need to keep an eye on the legislature -- who knows how many other short-notice amendments they may try to sneak onto HB 1293?