KINDER'S COMMENTARY: SCHOOLS NEED INPUT; NEA UPDATE

Tuesday evening's first of 15 Vision 2000 meetings on the future of Cape Girardeau's public schools was a success for those of us who turned out at Franklin School. A good exchange of ideas was offered by the several dozen who took the time to attend. The format involves breaking up into small focus groups, or listening sessions, where a facilitator stimulates discussion. It wasn't that time-consuming either, as we departed a meeting that began at 7 well before 8 p.m.

Future meetings will focus on: Educational Directions -- Oct. 10, Schultz, and Oct. 12, Alma Schrader, both at 7 p.m.; Educational Facilities -- Washington, Oct. 14, 9 a.m. and at May Greene Oct. 17 and Junior High Oct. 19, both at 7 p.m.; and finally, School Finances -- at Jefferson, Oct. 21, 9 a.m., at the Vo-Tech School, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. and Oct. 28 at Clippard, 9 a.m. Topping off the whole effort will be a Town Hall meeting at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 at Central High auditorium.

This is an absolutely sincere effort by new leadership on the Cape Girardeau School Board to reach out to a community yearning to improve our school system. Take the time to attend at least one of these meetings so you can support positive changes to strengthen our public schools.

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One item over the last few months that hasn't received nearly enough attention or media coverage is a resolution of the National Education Association. Meeting this past July in Minneapolis, a majority of the 8,700 delegates to the NEA national convention voted to support designating October as Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual History Month in our nation's schools. I haven't seen any news on the subject here in the greater Cape Girardeau-Jackson area, but the thing sort of hit the fan in Poplar Bluff.

"There is no educational value of having this type of thing in our schools," declared Danny Whiteley, a respected businessman and president of the Poplar Bluff R-1 Board of Education. "I can't be emphatic enough. There is no educational or moral value, period," Whiteley told the Daily American Republic newspaper.

Superintendent Mike Johnson agrees. "As long as I'm here we will not be observing this month," said Dr. Johnson. "I'm not asking people to be disrespectful or not to be compassionate. But we will not be promoting this type of lifestyle."

The NEA resolution, which local members tend to prefer not to discuss, is telling as to the true NEA agenda. It is also of a piece with other radical political statements the organization takes that have little, if anything, to do with educating our young people. Other resolutions approved at the convention promoted abortion on demand, for instance.

Someone needs to take the NEA on and face down these radicals, who constantly demand more money as they fiercely oppose real school reforms -- such as charter schools and parental freedom, or school choice in education. NEA union lobbyists also fight in the halls of your state capitol against any measure that would seek to identify truly excellent teachers and pay them more, as well as against any measure that attempts to compare the job one school is doing with another so that parents can be informed.

Each year sees the NEA crowd fighting for collective bargaining for public employees, which would effectively unionize our schools and open us up to divisive annual strikes of the kind we see across the river in Illinois. Think for a minute of what this would mean. The NEA is actually seeking the status of double monopolists: a monopoly provider of labor within a monopoly system of public education. Can you say "education cartel?" In this they are opposed by the sound thinking and the good people of Missouri's largest teachers' organization, the Missouri State Teachers Association. Thank God for the MSTA.

A good place for citizens to start informing themselves about the true nature of these keepers of the education cartel in the NEA would be the library. Go there and make yourself some copies of the devastating cover story on the NEA -- aka the National Extortion Association -- published in June 1993 by Forbes magazine.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.