[HAL9000]

All this time with a Republican governor and we still have a sales tax on groceries.

The voters decided not to abolish that tax in the last general election. The legislature refuses to act on it. Not Huckabee's fault.

We are talking about taking power from local school boards and moving it to Little Rock.

Except for the Lake View case, I believe the actual plan was to consolidate some of the smallest disticts into larger ones - e.g. merging the Garnett and Tyro districts into a single one. We don't need a separate school district for every intersection. There are too many districts to be funded and operated efficiently, and Huckabee had a sensible plan for dealing with the problem. If some underutilized superintendents have to find work elsewhere, that would be an improvement.

[Arkinsaw]

The voters decided not to abolish that tax in the last general election. The legislature refuses to act on it. Not Huckabee's fault.

The governorship in Arkansas is relatively powerless. The governor has to use the bully pulpit. The governor did not use the bully pulpit in regard to the food tax. His agencies bemoaned the loss of funds publicly.

Except for the Lake View case, I believe the actual plan was to consolidate some of the smallest disticts into larger ones - e.g. merging the Garnett and Tyro districts into a single one. We don't need a separate school district for every intersection. There are too many districts to be funded and operated efficiently, and Huckabee had a sensible plan for dealing with the problem. If some underutilized superintendents have to find work elsewhere, that would be an improvement.

I didn't say anything about consolidating shrimp sized districts. What I complained about were the parts of the plan that emasculated the local school boards and increased power for the Dept. of Education bureaucrats. That is not a conservative plan and its unacceptable. When the NEA said that they favored it very early on I immediately knew it was a bad deal. Of course the NEA would like bureaucrats in Little Rock to be in control. One stop lobbying of unelected officials.