Oh, excuse me. I meant to type “local control.”
I’ve slept on the Governor’s mantra about the virtue of local control. Allowing the Duluth School Board to do the unprecedented in defiance of the voters strikes me as dangerous. It wasn’t until Adolph Hitler got himself elected to the German Reichstag (his party got something like 30% of the vote) and began using the laws lawlessly that the Third Reich was born.
The question Governor Pawlenty ought to be asking himself is this: Does the “Republican” virtue of local control mean that a school board shouldn’t be trampled by state or national interferrence or does he mean that a school board should be free to do what it wishes in defiance of the popular local will? There is an even older American principal than “local control.” It should be familiar to every student who’s taken a government or civics class. Its called “checks and balances.”
Does our Governor really believe that denying a check on an unbalanced school board really violates the principle of “local control?” If so, we need a new Governor who will help restore some checks on the legalized outlaws of the Duluth School Board.
