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Editorial: Bullies, higher ed and vets
Op-Ed · January 22, 2015
In his State of the State speech last week, Gov. Terry Branstad offered some bold ideas to address bullying, encourage higher education and boost opportunities for veterans looking for work.
And while we look forward to seeing the state legislature bring some of these ideas into law, we do wonder about some of the means to these ends.
First off, we certainly expected to see wide-ranging support from both sides of the political aisle — and neither side disappointed — on the goal of ending bullying. That is how it should be.
However, we cannot enter this discussion with one eye closed. Zero bullying is an unattainable utopia without obliterating most rights and free will, yet there are some nodding to Branstad’s speech with exactly this in mind.
We also need to realize that teachers and other school staff, while trained and charged with the awesome responsibility of overseeing the children entrusted to them by parents, are human and have bad days, bias and grudges just like the rest of us.
So when Branstad’s Bully Free Act of 2015 requires parent notification when bullying happens in the school, as it ought, it includes an exception from that notification “if a bullied student and a school official believe that parent notification could lead to abuse, neglect or rejection.”
His word choice for that exception is very, very broad and pushes punishment without a crime: Parents with legal custody have the right to know what happens to their children, and withholding that information based on a suspicion, even a strong suspicion, raises serious questions. We favor aggressive action to end child abuse, but we question actions against parents based only on beliefs or suspicions.
We will watch with great interest to see what objective standard the governor or legislators suggest schools use to exercise this exception.
Another smaller point we applaud: The ability of a bullied student to change schools and immediately participate in athletics. Right now, any student who changes schools must sit out of sports for 30 days. This is to discourage school-hopping in hopes of getting things like a starting position or more playing time.
Branstad also talked about five-year projections that allow the state to balance its budget while still freezing tuition rates for a third straight year. The statement to follow brought great interest: “We challenged Iowa’s Board of Regents to develop a plan that offers students a set of degrees that they can earn for $10,000.”
This idea fosters more of an eyes-wide-open approach to higher education that no doubt students and families would greatly appreciate. We wonder if this idea would become even more meaningful if the school also offered a range of earning projections for accompanying careers to help a student select electives within that degree.
The governor went on to suggest that, when the student graduates and must begin paying off college loans, the state should offer an “Iowa Student Debt Reorganization Tax Credit.” Branstad’s tax credit “allows individuals to volunteer for worthy causes and in exchange have contributions made toward their student debt.”
While this sounds good to a degree, in that it may encourage students to volunteer when they otherwise would not, we wonder about the message that one should be paid to volunteer. That seems to undermine the spirit of volunteering and neglect the more important and more difficult-to-teach lesson of sacrificial giving.
Volunteering simply to benefit others is a quality where supply never meets demand, and it is a quality we should encourage at every opportunity.
That statement segues into one possible exception: National defense. Those who volunteered for military service deserve our gratitude far beyond what we can ever repay. Branstad addresses this by pointing to the Home Base Iowa legislation passed in 2014, which so far has helped match more than 600 veterans and their individual skill sets to jobs.
Eight cities and counties are part of Home Base Iowa, and eight colleges qualified for inclusion in the program by welcoming service members to their campuses. With more than 24,000 jobs posted to the online bank, Branstad wants this to expand, and we would certainly like to see that happen.
While the governor addressed more issues in his State of the State address, these three stood out. And we would encourage our legislators, state Rep. Robert “Bobby” Kaufmann and state Sen. Robert “Bob” Dvorsky, to vigorously participate in moving these issues forward.
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