Are New Hampshire Republicans for local control of public schools or not? It is an open question.
Last week, Senate Republicans passed Senate Bill 195, which mandates that every school in New Hampshire teach cursive and multiplication tables. Schools ought to teach those subjects, but a legislative mandate that they do so can hardly be called “local control.”
On Wednesday, House Republicans passed House Bill 276, which would allow local districts to opt out of Common Core standards. “House Republicans will always support greater local control of education curriculum and standards,” Rep. Rick Ladd, R-Haverhill, boasted in a press release.
If so, then they will kill Senate Bill 195 and let local school districts decide for themselves whether to teach cursive and multiplication tables.
Ladd went on to say that the Common Core bill “is truly an effort to preserve local control from the ever-encroaching Federal Department of Education’s controlling footprint. Parents and local school boards should be empowered to make decisions to best suit the needs of their students and children.”
His reference to the federal government raises an important question. Is it the position of the state Republican Party that parents and local school boards should be free from all mandates, or just those that originate in Washington?
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State Senator Lou D'Allesandro recently penned an attack on our current campaign finance system while his limousine crashed through the streets of Manchester pursued by black clad motorcyclists. Open government is not owned by anyone but the people. When a citizen in my district chooses to speak his or her mind, that person can walk through the doors of the State House without being stopped or questioned and can walk directly into my office. My door is always open. As New Hampshire citizens, we believe this is right because we believe that the Capitol is the people’s house and that our job as legislators is to serve the people. I try to embody this belief and work very hard to respond to my constituents, even stopping in the hallways between sessions to hear what they have to say. If we disagree, we might even have a debate. Such respect and openness to our constituents is the envy of other states, where the citizenry may not have as direct access to their elected officials. Charlie Arlinghaus of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy goes into the weeds on healthcare policy: Among politicians, price controls are a bad idea unless they’re your idea. In truth, the government setting prices is never the right solution to a problem. Democratic Leader Stephen Shurtleff of Penacook recently wrote to the Monitor arguing for a hike in the minimum wage:
Daniel Weeks of the Coalition for Open Democracy stealthily penetrated the offices of NH Magazine some days ago, leaving a virus that endlessly reprinted this editorial on every connected printer. Five years after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited political spending, elections for public office have become a private good. William Tucker at Miscellany Blue spends most of his pixels documenting crazy or offensive things NH Republicans have said. In honor of the New Year, he has rummaged back through his treasure trove to forge a top ten list. I think number eight is my favorite. Obama has opened Pandora’s Box, and it will be the end of a free enterprise, Capitalistic, Christian/Jewish Society, with a strong work ethic country, will change into a country where the majority of people will speak Spanish, and be Islamic within the next 20 years. (Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world right now, and the experts say the Caucasian Race will be a minority in 15 years, or less.) It would take a complete closing of all American borders, and the Liberals, or Progressives, as they call it, in our Country will never allow such a thing. (It would be racist, and prejudicial.) This coming September and November will be the end of our 250 years as a Republic, (which is the average lifetime of ALL Republics.) Matt Murray of NH Labor News recently took to the pages of the Concord Monitor to warn everyone about Free Staters: We are well into the 2014 election season, and there’s a lot at stake. Skip at Granite Grok wants to prove that an event in 2012 contributed to subsequent events, while disproving an opposing theory. So naturally he turns to a data set that ends in 2012. The Obama Administration and Open Borders / Anti-America activists are lying to us. Very interesting stats from American Thinker pulled from the LA Times – sorta made me think “Gosh, what the Obama Administration has been saying about WHY these illegal alien kids are coming is just like that anti-muslim video caused Benghazi”: It is clear that the Obama Administration’s own words and policies served as an incentive to pull the illegal immigrants kids northward. And as to the weasel words about the level of violence rising in the Central American countries? Here’s the murder rates (per 100,000 population), from 2008 to 2012: And some of us more than others.
If only there were some other way of finding out more current information about El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The lead story on my digital copy of the New Hampshire Union Leader is…”NH Traffic Death Take Sharp Decline.” |