Dan Boyland’s “A tale of two school districts” in the midweek 8/30/06 issue was an interesting example of obfuscation. He reported on two mid western USA school districts without ever getting focused on what the bottom line should be: adequately preparing young people to be productive, responsible, effective adults.

Instead, it was all about spending money and nothing about the desired end result. To Dan, spending money seems to be an end in itself. At one point he mentioned that some teachers he had in one school were “certifiable lolos”, but it never seemed to occur to him that paying lolos money does not improve their performance. Instead he loves the physical, like the auditorium” and the “well-manicured campus”. The meta-physical need for quality thinkers and actors as graduates went right by him.

He concludes “But raising-and-spending-money is absolutely imperctive.” One needs to ask: Why?

Spend it there instead of what?

Richard O. Rowland is president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a non-partisan, non-profit public policy institute focused on promoting the free-market, individual freedom and liberty. He is now in his third career; the first culminating in his retirement as a Colonel, U.S. Army Military Police Corps, from the second he retired as a Financial Representative with Northwestern Mutual Network. He has a premonition that any further careers will not be in government service. He can be reached via email at: mailto:dick@grassrootinstitute.org.