PARENTS AS TEACHERS GET A NATIONAL FORUM

Several items in the news recently are deserving of brief comment.

Christopher Bond, as a two-term governor of Missouri and now a U.S. senator, has long taken an active interest in family issues and education of the very young. Last week, a pet project of Sen. Bond's, Parents as Teachers, became part of legislation known as Goal 2000, which establishes national academic guidelines. President Clinton signed the legislation into law Thursday.

Essentially, the Parents as Teachers program offers families guidance about child development, prenatal services, health screenings and other resources aimed at helping children enter their school years ready to learn. Missouri pioneered the program, beginning in the Bond administration in 1981, and it was mandated statewide in 1984. Now, 42 states have adopted the program.

We believe children stand to gain a lot by getting educational attention at a younger age. Preparing parents to be better educators in the years before the child begins formal schooling is a good investment, one that pays itself back in an academic sense as well as a societal one. We applaud its addition to the national education goals.

Often in the business world, what is one community's good fortune is another community's hard luck. Such is the case with the announced closure of the Florsheim Shoe Factory in West Plains last week. About 350 employees will be affected. With that bad news for West Plains comes converse good news for Cape Girardeau, where dozens of jobs from West Plains will be shifted. Kirksville will also benefit from additional jobs because of the closure.

The Cape Girardeau Florsheim plant, which employs 440 people now, has occasionally been the subject of dire speculation because of the volatile nature of the shoe business. However, remaining open through the latest round of cost cutting, and even gaining some positions, seems to bode well for the immediate future of the facility here. It is a valued industry and employer in Cape Girardeau, and we hope it continues to thrive.

The Jackson school district has long been known for having one of the more unique chores in Missouri education. Because of the sprawling nature of the district, Jackson bus routes are believed to be among the longest in Missouri. It is a breathtaking duty that requires a fleet of 43 buses. On Tuesday, each vehicle in the fleet passed its inspection, a considerable feat.

Officers from the Missouri Highway Patrol's motor vehicle inspection division checked the buses Tuesday for shortcomings in lighting, seating, fire extinguishers, emergency doors, exit lights and signs, steering, brakes, shock absorbers, tires and other things. A few minor defects were cited, but none of the vehicles was taken out of service.

The clean bill of health is a testament to the conscientious efforts of fleet managers at Jackson. Beyond that, we commend the inspection process itself and its aim of keeping school buses safe. As one inspector pointed out this week, the cargo they haul is precious, and all efforts should be made to keep these vehicles in top shape.

While we find it probably fruitless to moralize on this, and possibly only inviting repeat offenses, we see the recent run of threats against public buildings in Jackson as dangerous, vain and ultimately just sad. It takes just one misguided soul to disrupt an institution in this way, and surely the satisfaction of that can't be worth the risks faced. And the cost of addressing these threats is borne by each of us, since public dollars are wasted in lost productivity and in providing the manpower to investigate the situations.

It is a waste in every sense of that word. Let's hope it doesn't continue.