| OCR Text |
Show PAGE 4 THE ZEPHYR APRIL 1994 Facts learning has improved. told the media that he believed the Grand County Superintendent of Schools Rich Averett their concerns about the future of student protest was an effort to inform district officials of school board members know how let to students education in the county, and he encouraged they feel. OPINION Opinions summary a of the month's news. by Ken Davey FACT After voting to impose a two percent gross business license fee, or local sales tax, on retail transactions at businesses outside dty limits, the Grand County Council held a special meeting just a week later to rescind that action. The tax would have been similar to the Moab dty sales tax, and would have meant that retail outlets outside Moab would end up charging the same tax as those inside the dty. The county had been counting on the tax, and had budgeted $75,000 in revenue for 1994. But after passing the tax, the council was told of a Utah State Supreme Court decision in 1983. At that time, Emery County tried to pass a similar tax, but the courts ruled that, based on legal precedents set around the turn of the century, counties do not have the power to impose it. OPINION The dedsion to withdraw this tax, and give up the $75,000 revenues is the final nail in the coffin of any hopes council members had of keeping a lid on property taxes in 1993. The increase in visitors and the accompanying increase in legally mandated services the county is required to provide for those visitors, means that you and me and everyone else who owns land here will end up subsidizing those visitors more heavily next year. When the county budget hearing takes place in November, and when the coundl announces they are raising property taxes, there will be a massive hue and cry against it. Coundl members will be criticized, berated, cursed, and bombarded with insults. The truth is that the county coundl tried to find some way, any way, to get the burden off the people who live here. But an array of individuals and groups, ranging from federal officials to local businesses, made sure that once again the people of Grand County pay for everyone else's vacations. Senators Hatch and Bennett and Representative Orton are able to get from the federal budget hundreds of thousands of dollars for lavish displays inside the downtown visitors center. But when county officials here try to get die federal government to increase payment in lieu of tax money so we can pay for disposing of those same tourists' garbage and rescuing them from the canyons, our elected officials in Washington let us down. So the county turned to trying to take some of the transient room tax, now going to things like building a golf course in Green River, and using it for the landfill or the emergency room or for more sheriffs deputies to patrol the hordes of visitors. But that too was shot down, and the local travel council played a less than heroic role in the figftt, with some of its members lobbying against the idea. And state lawmakers decided they know better than we do how to spend our own tax revenues. Now, the state supreme court decides that counties, for reasons that defy simple logic, cannot impose the exact same tax that cities across the state collect every day. Despite their best efforts, the county council will get blamed for raising taxes, a blame they don't deserve. Two of the three council members up for election this year have signed up to run again. I can't for the life of me figure out why. FACT On Monday morning March 21, more than 100 Grand County High School students walked out of school and marched up to the Board of Education offices to protest a decision by the school board to not rehire high school principal Larry Price. Price will finish his second year as principal at die end of this term. The students urged the school board to change its position. Students stated that under the leadership of Price, the dropout rate has declined significantly, and that the atmosphere for It was a case of students following through on their basically good instincts. And it was also a case of parents setting a less than perfect example. t arry Price is a well respected and well liked high school principal. Student after student at the protest meeting explained how they felt, if they had a problem with school work or individual teachers or assignments, or just questions or doubts about what was going on with their education, they could talk to him, and that he would listen and act in a way that showed he cared, truly cared, about them and about what their futures hold. A number of youngsters their grades, their explained that, through working individually with Price, they improved achievement, and their very outlook on the importance of education. Larry Price has the ability to reach a group of kids who, until now, just were not reached through previous school district efforts. Losing his skills, losing his ability to communicate and interact with a group of young citizens who don't always have an easy time relating to distant, bureaucratic and often we all should feel bad about. unresponsive adult authority figures and institutions is something or than different is school a counselling at one. Running an But. Administering teaching students with hundreds of different institution that encompasses hundreds of individual of strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and anxieties staying on top a staff of teachers with different levels of education, classroom techniques and abilities, watching over federal and state grant programs where missteps can result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in various grants and aid packages, checking and rechecking and expanding and refining a budget erf millions of dollars, these are all duties that can require a different type of personality, character and skill that are not necessarily present in a gifted and popular teacher or guidance counselor. Members of the Grand County Board of Education refuse to discuss reasons they might have for not offering Price a new contract. They refuse even to acknowledge that they did indeed decline to make the offer, but since Price has publicly stated that fact and no board members dispute it, it's a conclusion we can draw. And the board's unwillingness to talk about it has raised, to some, the question of the honesty of their decision. The logic goes something along the lines of, they're not willing to back up what they say publicly, they must be up to something. But the reason for the silence is that the issue concerns the private, personal record of a school district employee, and to disclose board deliberations and conclusions would violate the rights not only of Price but of all public employees who do not sign over their baric human rights to be secure in their own privacy when they take a public job. The only person who can release that information is Price himself. And so it puts board members in a very, very, difficult position. For if, in their opinion (and they are elected by us to form those opinions and to act upon them), the best interests of education as a whole are served by a change in administration at any of the local schools, they are supposed to make that change. During the first couple of years on the job, both teachers and administrators are on a sort of "probation," where the board can, for whatever reasons they so choose, determine that an individual is not doing all the things they were hired to do. And if they come to such a conclusion, they are empowered (and ethically required) to do something about it The students who took to the streets on March 21 have made their view known: that Price is an asset a beleaguered school system can ill afford to lose. They were right to make their feelings known, in the most forceful way available. But die students also have to realize that if the school board does not agree with them, it does not necessarily mean the board did not listen; it could mean that the students did not or could not, with the available facts, make a compelling case. It is the nature of the real world that you do not win every argument, your view does not and can not always carry. This is an understanding that many of the students do not appear willing to accept, or even entertain. And there is another disturbing element in die students' argument In their efforts to defend and promote Price, they have looked for a scapegoat they can blame. And in their rush to find someone to dump on, they fell victim to rumor, unsubstantiated information, and, in the final analysis, slander. There is a at the high school named Mike Aaron. And at the protest rally, students repeated rumors they had heard that Aaron had already been chosen by the school board to take Price's place. Mike, with more than 20 years of experience in die classrooms and as an administrator, came to Moab last summer and accepted the unenviable assignment of disciplinarian at the high school, the guy who metes out punishment for violations ranging from smoking in the boys' room to cutting dasses. I remember the disciplinarian in my high school; I can't recall his name, but I still remember vice-princip- al GfejSife (StSHffii? fitajfeO Q30tGl000 DAVE'S BLISSFUL MOOD CONTINUES ... BUT DAVE! THE TOWN'S GONE CRAZY! IT'S SO CROWDED WE CANT MOVE! COLLY IM BLISSFUL. AS LONG AS I'VE GOT MY HERSHEY BAR AND A CUP OF MY FAMOUS COFFEE... ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD. 5 . |
