Recent editorials from West Virginia newspapers:
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March 22
The Inter-Mountain on picking the state’s new school superintendent:
Picking the right person to become West Virginia’s new school superintendent will be a difficult task for state Board of Education members, in part because of the mixed signals that person will have to sort through.
Current state Superintendent Michael Martirano will be leaving at the end of the current school year. Martirano, though leaving the post for personal reasons, experienced his share of challenges in determining just what legislators want from the state Department of Education.
There are signs the job will be no easier for his successor.
Part of the problem is that at both the state and federal levels, top officials maintain they want to restore more local control of public schools - then they implement new state and federal mandates for educators.
West Virginia legislators are providing an example of that. A bill in the state Senate, SB 524, would block use of the widely unpopular Common Core curriculum standards in our state. That program was forced down many states’ throats by the U.S. Department of Education.
But SB 524 would require Mountain State public schools to use mathematics curriculum from California and language arts standards from Massachusetts. Some critics have noted requirements in both those states were used to develop Common Core.
So, in place of math and English curriculum detailed in the Common Core program, West Virginia educators could find themselves required to do the same thing under a different name.
No matter how much lipstick one applies to the pig …
Some facets of Common Core are good. The California math and Massachusetts language arts outlines may - or may not - be among them.
But the point is that while insisting the state and federal departments of education should give local school officials more control, legislators are on a path to restrict local options.
Twelve people have applied for the state superintendent’s job. West Virginia Board of Education members have begun looking at the applicants.
Let us hope the winner has both the education credentials to improve Mountain State schools and the political experience to deal with the “do as we say, not as we do” mentality that so often prevails in Charleston.
Online:
https://www.theintermountain.com/
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March 22
The Journal of Martinsburg on vacancies in state government offices:
When governors are called upon to appoint people to fill vacancies in important state government offices, the right thing for them to do is name someone of the same political party as the person who has vacated the position. Most of the time that is what happens; sometimes, as with members of the Legislature, such action is required by law.
But it is not stipulated for some of the most important positions, including secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, attorney general and commissioner of agriculture.
Last week the state Senate approved a bill requiring that when there are vacancies in those offices, governors are to appoint temporary replacements from the same parties as those who had held the positions.
Republicans who control the Legislature are being accused of playing politics by taking the action. To the contrary, they are preventing governors in the future from doing that.
Voters who elect a man or woman to high office in West Virginia expect the position to be held by someone with a certain political philosophy. That quality often is shown by the person’s party affiliation. Allowing governors to appoint someone of the other party would allow them to thwart the wishes of voters.
Senators were right to approve the bill. The House of Delegates should follow suit - and Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat, should sign the measure into law regardless of his own party allegiance.
Online:
https://www.journal-news.net/
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March 21
The Parkersburg News and Sentinel on the Appalachian Regional Commission:
Just as some in Charleston are scrambling to hold on to pieces of a bloated bureaucracy that serves itself much better than it serves West Virginians, there are some in Washington, D.C., looking to save themselves from President Donald Trump’s decree that a $54 billion boost in defense spending will be covered by the elimination of some programs and agencies. One of the agencies on Trump’s chopping block has spent more than 50 years sucking up taxpayer dollars in return for doing almost nothing to help the people it is supposed to serve: the Appalachian Regional Commission.
Brainchild of President John F. Kennedy, led in its early form by Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., and given the full weight of the Appalachian Regional Development Act by President Lyndon Johnson, the ARC was an elitist liberal idea supposed to bring the 420 counties in 13 states it called Appalachia out of isolation and move it toward economic prosperity. It has done neither of those things.
West Virginia is the only state fully under the ARC’s umbrella. After half-a-century of federal handouts, it is the second-poorest state in the nation. Mississippi, which is partially covered by the ARC, is the poorest. The Mountain State is routinely near the bottom of rankings for education, health care, transportation/infrastructure and general wellbeing. For years we have had a higher drug overdose rate than any other state.
And as for all that ARC infrastructure help, as one pundit put it “the real halt to federally funded state projects came when (late U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.) died in June 2010.”
Even one of the ARC’s federal co-chairmen, Earl Gohl, acknowledges the poverty level in Appalachia remains up to 13 percent higher than the rest of the country. “We’re leaving some folks behind,” he said.
Why then would Trump and Congress spare a redundant agency that has thrown billions of taxpayer dollars at a region in which it has not accomplished its mission?
Predictably, ARC officials say shutting it down now would leave its work unfinished. They just need a little more time, they say.
It has been 52 years. Defund the ARC.
Online:
https://www.newsandsentinel.com/
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