John Heim: Cut rhetoric and focus on students

“Highly inefficient, if not immoral.”

That is a phrase that brings to mind many different kinds of bad behavior and debauchery. My mind does not turn to the decisions made by Kansas school board members on behalf of our students.

Reasonable minds might differ on what is inefficient, but moral judgments reach a higher level and should not be made lightly.

Great minds have written broadly on the subject of moral behavior. In practice, it is an emotion-laden term that gets personal fast.

When Gov. Sam Brownback forwarded the idea in his State of the State address that school board members make immoral decisions, it did not sit well with me. My first reaction was a lengthy diatribe.

But then I remembered the arguments my older sister and I used to get into when we were young. My grandmother often had to intervene, and we had to sit down for what she called “devotionals.”

For a 10-year-old boy on a farm with horses to ride, creeks to dam, forts to build and kittens to catch, this was a terrible punishment.

My sister and I would be forced to read and discuss Matthew 5:39 – “whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well” – or 1 Thessalonians 5:15 – “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.”

At the time, I was seething and didn’t much care for the message, kind of like I was after the State of the State. But those words from Scripture and Grandma’s advice stuck with me.

The business of educating Kansas students is too important for pettiness, name-calling and snark. It doesn’t advance the cause of education in Kansas.

Thanks to the Kansas State Board of Education, we have a new vision for Kansas education. Now we have to decide what we want from our schools, and how we pay for it.

Can we focus on that instead of making policy by anecdote and trying to find problems for ready-made solutions?

The state board did it. Can school leaders and the leaders in Topeka do it?

The day of the State of the State speech, an alliance of the United School Administrators of Kansas, Kansas School Superintendents Association, Kansas National Education Association and Kansas Association of School Boards issued a statement asking for a partnership with the governor and Legislature to improve Kansas public education.

Let’s cut the political rhetoric and focus on what Kansas students need from their schools and how to pay for it.

This story was originally published January 23, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "John Heim: Cut rhetoric and focus on students."