MUTH’S TRUTHS

Hooo-wee! Did you get a load of that long-winded, rambling 1,700-word book-to-the-editor rant by Nevada State Board of Education member Barbara Myers published on the Nevada Appeal’s online website Tuesday? Yowza. That mama-jama coulda choked a horse.

In case you missed it - or stopped reading out of sheer boredom after the second paragraph - allow me to summarize: Ms. Myers blubbered that you can’t possibly operate a private K-5 school charging $5,000 per student/per year in tuition. This “Public School Educated and Educator” with a “Master’s Degree in Business Management” was writing to oppose my idea to give parents $5,000 in tuition assistance to use at a private school if they think their child’s public school isn’t cutting the mustard, but rather is cutting the cheese.

Ms. Myers went on – and on, and on, and on - using typical public school “fuzzy math” and red herrings to “prove” it can’t be done. Fortunately, I’m a teacher myself. I have a home-schooled doctorate in Psephology. So allow Professor Muth to impart upon Ms. Myers a real-life lesson: Those who say something can’t be done should get out of the way of people who are already doing it.

You see, had Ms. Myers done her homework (or kept her dog from eating it) she would have found that there are plenty of schools in Nevada where students can get a non-public school education for less than $5,000 a year. In fact, it took me all of five minutes on the Internet to find four such schools right here in the Carson City area.

Bethlehem Lutheran School’s annual tuition rate is listed at $3,764. For math-challenged members of the Board of Education, $3,764 is less than $5,000 – the symbol for which is “<”. Over at Capital Christian School, the annual tuition is listed as $3,200 for the first child and $2,400 for additional siblings. At St. Teresa’s Catholic School, the annual tuition is advertised as $3,225 for the first child, $1,825 for the second child and $1,525 for each child after that (I think Catholics still have a three-child minimum). And at Grace Christian Academy, annual tuition fees are listed at $3,500 for grades 1-6 and $3,750 for grades 7-8. All of these are <$5,000.

In an email to me last December - after I took her to task for ducking out on the vote to ban new charter schools in the state - Ms. Myers wrote, “Sometimes it pays to be dumb, I guess. It has served me well, I’ve been elected 5 of 5 times…”

While it may well be true that voters are predisposed to elect “dumb” people like Ms. Myers to the Board of Education, it unfortunately hasn’t served our kids very well. We should all try to do better this year; for the children of course.

Speaking of elections, Appeal letter writer Gail Edwards - commanding a far better economy of words to make his point than the above-referenced Ms. Myers - recently lamented Mayor Marv Teixera’s push for a new tax hike to fund his V&T Railroad to Nowhere. “I don't know about you but I'm totally fed up with the Good Ole Boys that have run Carson City for years because NO ONE runs against them,” Edwards wrote. “Is there any person male or female in our fine community that would like to take on this job?”

Well, what about Bob?

Bob Crowell, that is. Bob currently serves on the Carson City school board and is the immediate past president of the Carson City Chamber of Commerce. He and I don’t usually walk on the same side of the political and philosophical tracks, but he would bring both a world of experience and a welcome new perspective to City Hall.

Many of us believe Carson City could use a truly competitive race for mayor this year between something old and something new. So without making an endorsement in the race, I’ve set up a website simply for the purpose of encouraging Bob Crowell to throw his hat in the ring. If you’d like to join me in urging Bob to run for mayor this year, please go to www.whataboutbob.info and sign the online petition you’ll find there.

Now if we could just find someone to run against Ms. Myers…

Posted on March 27th, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National