KINDER'S COMMENTARY: EFFORT WILL BE MADE TO IMPROVE STATE FUNDING FOR CAPE SCHOOLS

There probably isn't a school district in Missouri that is being hurt as badly as is the Cape Girardeau School District under the state's foundation formula for distributing state aid to local districts. (Close behind is the Perryville district just up the road.) You have read recently about shortfalls in state aid that are forcing our local school board to consider drastic budget cuts.

State Rep. Mary Kasten and I are working overtime to try to fix the funding problems of the Cape school district. Mary has taken the lead in rallying her fellow state representatives who represent what the state calls hold-harmless districts (of which Cape is one) to a meeting Monday evening in the Capitol. Superintendent Dr. Dan Tallent will be in attendance to plead our case with facts and figures.

Separately, I have gone to my colleague, state Sen. Harold Caskey, D-Butler, who is handling Senate Substitute for Senate Bill 781, the major bill to try to fix the Kansas City and St. Louis desegregation cases. The significance of this measure is that for the first time in five years, this bill opens the state funding formula for consideration and possible amendment on the Senate floor. This is the very formula under which we have been getting hurt so badly since the passage of Senate Bill 380 in 1993. Sen. Caskey told me this week he would be glad to meet with Dr. Tallent, and we will accomplish that, and hopefully more, during Dr. Tallent's important visit.

I am also enlisting the aid of former state Rep. Marvin Proffer, who does such a good job of representing Southeast Missouri State University in the Capitol.

I will be stressing to one and all that we have taken great strides in the Cape schools these past two years, especially with last year's passage of the building bond issue for three new schools. Things are going well in Cape, and we need to keep it that way. All this will be the focus of this week's meetings and of lots of efforts during these last seven weeks of the legislative session.

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It was good this past week to be able to be the host for the annual visit to the Capitol of fourth graders from Washington School. This is always a well-behaved group, and it is a pleasure to see them and introduce them to the Senate.

The visit from the Washington School group followed by a day the Capitol visit of a group of seventh and eighth graders from the Altenburg School. More than one Capitol regular commented to me on what a sharp-looking group this was, noting that each and every boy was wearing a tie with his shirt.

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On this page last week, my friend and fellow Eagle Scout Ben Lewis (both of us from old Troop 3) penned a superb piece on the threat to Scouting posed by the New Jersey court ruling concerning admitting homosexuals as Scout leaders.

What Ben didn't have the space to relate in that column is that there is good news this week from California to counterbalance the bad news from the New Jersey court ruling Ben related. The California Supreme Court ruled -- unanimously -- that the Boy Scouts of America don't have to admit avowed homosexuals, agnostics or atheists. The two cases were brought by a pair of twin brothers in Orange County who refused to recite the Scout oath because it contains a reference to God, and by a man who had been an assistant Scoutmaster before his homosexuality was revealed.

Reading that such battles have to be waged today to protect an outfit as good and true as the Boy Scouts, do you doubt there is a war going on for control of our culture? Perhaps this news will spur others, previously complacent, to sign up wherever and however you can.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.