An Ominous Endorsement

David Thalheimer makes no bones about his admiration of HoCo school board member, Allen Dyer. In this story by John-John Williams in The Sun, David refers to Dyer as his “friend and supporter.”

I happen to think that Allen Dyer is the worst member of the eight member board. I’m not alone in that opinion either. Among other things Allen believes that the school system “should not give parents the right to censor what their children see, because that’s what this is censorship.”

He also doesn’t believe in providing public school buses for parochial schools. He claims that the county is constitutionally barred from doing this. Forget for a moment that county taxpayers who send their kids to private schools are saving the county money.

He also has some scary ideas about individual property rights.

Allen likes David too. “Dyer said the board needs Thalheimer.”

This is the very reason why elected school boards are not always a good idea. Not enough people dial down to the school board level when tuning into to local politics. Go ahead, try and name at two least other members of the current board without looking it up. In his blog, Frank Hecker recently wrote an excellent post about this very subject.

“Most voters, including me, do not have the time, energy, or background to make an informed decision on each and every elected position, which means that in practice the more secondary elected positions like school board will end up being decided by a minority of voters that is not necessarily representative of voters as a whole.”

That’s how a guy like Allen Dyer gets elected to the board.

This is no small issue either. HoCo has one of the best public school systems in the country. It is vital to the economic health and welfare of our county. Contrary to David Thalheimers opinion the HoCo Public School Systems is not broken.

“Thalheimer has been unhappy with several aspects of how the education system has been managed, including fiscal accountability, redistricting, school choice, curriculum quality and a lack of transparency.

"The more I read about the failings of this nation's public system of education, the more strongly I feel about the need to make a difference," he said. "We are falling behind the rest of the developed world in math and science education, and I believe this is because our public school systems are largely dysfunctional."

Hey David, it may be failing elsewhere, but it’s not failing here in HoCo.