In a very expected (yet still controversial) move yesterday, the State School Board voted 9-2 to remove State class size mandates in favor of letting the local school systems decide class sizes on their own.
Watching my news (including blogs), facebook, and twitter streams, it became readily apparent that this wasn’t exactly a popular move.
Apparently, people are so caught up in the “Government is my Savior” way of thinking that the idea of the 5-7 people they live within a few miles of deciding how big their school system’s class sizes will be is FAR scarier than the former reality of several people who may live hundreds of miles away making that same decision.
I applaud the State School Board’s decision yesterday – it is a victory for Genuine Local Control. Now, rather than some bureaucrat in Atlanta deciding whether my wife can have a maximum of 15, 30, 45, or 100 students in her classroom, it is the 5 member Lee County School Board. Instead of a School Board representative for the entire 2nd Congressional District (30+ counties) who happens to live in Albany but could live anywhere in the District making decisions about how many kids will be in my wife’s classroom, it is a guy who lives barely 2 miles from my house and represents 1/5 of Lee County.
Tell me which of those two people it is easier to contact? The lady I have to go to Atlanta to see (IF she happens to be there), or the guy who I could very well run into in the local grocery store? Which of those two is more likely to listen to me? The one who is only indirectly elected by me, via the people I elect to the General Assembly, or the one who came to my doorstep in 2008 asking me for my vote?
The State Board made the right call yesterday, and those who are screaming otherwise are exposing themselves as blatant Big Government Statists who don’t give a rat’s tail about local decisions being made by the locals – no matter how much they may tell you otherwise.
[UPDATE] Remember what I said about exposing themselves as blatant Big Government Statists? Karen Handel, Nathan Deal, John Oxendine just did – as did the Democrats, but that was very expected. Eric Johnson was borderline.
