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Show Page HE HERALD. Provo. Utah. Friday. November 17 1978 State Education Officials Refute Allegations Concerning Bus System Bv MICHAEL WHITNEY SALT LAKE CITY (UPI) - Utah's school bus system in hazardous and too expensive, says Legislative Auditor General Mont G Kenney but state education officials say the charges are unfair and loaded with errors In a performance aud! presented Wednesday to the Legislature's Public Education Committee, Kenney iden tified several unsafe practices and said money is wasted in several areas But State Superintendent of Public Education Walter Talbot said in a rebuttal published with audit that the report contained some incorrect information and did not give credit for progress made in solving problems And staff workers for the State Board of Education, in a separate and lengthy printed reply, said the audit did not place the problems in proper perspec tive.and they listed numerous factual errors and wrong assumptions they said were made by the members of Kenney's staff who compiled the report The audit outlined numerous problems under five main headings Licensing of School Bus Drivers Some school bus drivers have revoked or suspended licenses and poor driving records. In addition, one driver in 10 does not have the required chauffeurs license, and the other half of the drivers do not have the annual physical examination Training of Drivers and Students Thirty percent of the bus drivers have not taken the required basic school bus drivers course. Less than half have received the required inservice training. We could not verify that any traindrivers had received ing. Also, many students are not being in emergency bus evacuation and other aspects of bus and traffic safety. Purchasing of Buses and Tires The state and the school districts could save (300,000 annually by combined statewide purchasing of school buses. This could still a'low for necessary district options such as bus size, engine size, and type of transmission. Districts could also save an add of their bus tire exditional penditures by merely using the state contract for tire purchases. trained one-thir- - Cost Controls Pupil counts used in distributing state transportation funds to districts are inaccurate So also are salary fuel and parts accounts As a result the state's cost is higher than it should be Bus Utilization and Insurance The state is paying the districts an unnecessary $63 000 annually for depreciation on spare buses beyond those allowed under the State Board of Education guidelines. The districts could save one-ha-lf on their bus physical damage by - these losses Further surance costs could be reduced by insuring unused school buses during summer Numerous recommendations correcting the safety problems and cess costs were also outlined in report in- not the for ex- the Town Needs Doctor.,. And Dentist - The CRAIGMONT, Idaho (UPI) small central Idaho community has been looking for the services of a doctor for the past five years Now it needs a dentist, too. Despite national advertisements in medical journals and other periodicals, the search has been fruitless. The local Chamber of Commerce has gone so far as to secure and equip a doctor's office for anyone who will set up a practice. But still no takers. "We've had a few doctors tell us Craigmont (pop. about 1,200) is very nice and some day we're going to get a doctor, but not them,'' said Chamber of Commerce search coordinator Oscar Funk. The town's new emergency medical technician "Quick Response Unit" is handling emergency situations. Funk said doctor's wives appear to be the number one enemy of small towns. Most of the doctors interviewed have been from larger cities. "When their wives see Craigmont, interest quickly wanes." Breakthrough Seen on Transplants Talbot said in his response. Our disappointment with the report is that for the most part it fails to recoginize the great amount of progress which has been made and work that has been done by the staff to strengthen the school transportation system The report has some serious errors in the use of statistics and some false assumptions drawn from inconclusive GATLINBURG. Tenn (UPI -Scientists may be near a medical breakthrough that would allow human organs to be frozen and saved for later transplants, a leading biologist says Such a step would mean hospital patients needing transplants could genetically compatible organs with little or no delay. Dr Peter Mazur told a meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing here Tuesday Organs removed from a dead person normally must be transplanted within matter of hours or they become useless, said Mazur. a biologist with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ob-tai- he said findings The errors and erroneous assumption were pointed out to members of the auditor general s staff while they were preparing the report. Talbot said "but they apparently didn't think the errors were important enough to amend the " report In its rebuttal, the State Board of Education's staff said the report did not follow the accepted practice of placing primary emphasis on improvement rather than criticism of the past, and did not place problems in proper context by giving officials credit for But Mazur said work performed b him and Dr Stanley Leibo. also of Oak the Ridge in the field of cryobiology study of how subzero temperatures afmeans mankind fect living systems one day may be able to control time, r ather than the reverse. trying to solve them "For example, the staff members said, after the reorganization of the Pupil Transportation Section in 1974. the Externa! Support Service Division and the Pupil Transportation Section embarked as fast as time and monev would permit on a series of ojectives Considerable progress has been made in the attainment of those objectives "The auditing team has not once mentioned that the division under criticism prior to the audit launched significant efforts which will eventually control the problems which are found in existence." And the staff members labeled the audit "disheartening" because "the criticism occurs in the very areas they have taken initiative and are making considerable progress." "The fact is that they're being heavihas ly criticized before significant elapsed for the fruition of their direction and efforts to be realized," the board's staff said. Talbot said many of the problems identified in the audit are the responsibility of local school boards not the state school board. And he said the report "fails to take into account the traditional and historic separation of the State Board and local boards of education. THE stone corner- the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing was ceremonially pried open this week by members of Bricklayers Local of 31 of Lansing. The comer- - stone, which was actually opened last week to prepare for this formal ceremony, yielded a complete series of 1873 U.S. gold coins. The capitol was dedicated Jan. 1, 1879. (UPI Telephoto) Gold Coins in Cornerstone LANSING. Mich. solemn Masonic (UP - ) In a ceremony that duplicated centuryold events, the cornerstone of the state Capitol was pried open Inside was a valuable cache of 1873 gold coins. The cornerstone in reality was broken last week and a glass-linecopartifacts per box containing circa-187was removed However, Wednesday marked the formal, public opening and it provoked a ceremony stampede of spectators to catch of glimpse of the coins, forcing those in back to shout: "Down in front." The coins will be displayed in the Capitol Rotunda until next October, when they will be returned to the cornerstone along with memorabilia from the 1970s The Capitol was dedicated Jan. 1, d 3 1879. To the dismav of state historical of ficials and archeologists, moisture had seeped into the box, destroying most of its contents Among the items that had disintegrated were the first penny postcard issued in the United States, a parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence, government documents and publications and copies of all daily newspapers published in Michigan on Sept. 27. 1873. However, a complete series of 1873 U.S. gold coins survived. They are described as the only collection of its kind outside the Smithsonian Institute at the nation's capital. Not all the talk was solemn at the ceremonial opening of the cornerstone. I don t expect to be around 100 years from now when the cornerstone is opened again." House Speaker Bobby D. Crim told a throng of officials and spectators gathered to watch the ' ' ceremony. imhtiiavh He said six years ago he and Leibo and a British researcher successfully froze mouse embryos, then thawed them and implanted the eggs in fostr: mothers which gave birth to healthy mice. That accomplishment, dramatic results along sperm preservation, moved the scientists to press harder in their efforts to freeze human organs and store them indefinitely, Mazur said Cryobiologic advances with mammalian embryos and fetal organs have made it likely that a human kidney, composed of a wide variety of cells, will be successfully preserved in the near future, he said. But a major obstacle has to do with finding the right cooling and thawing range because different cells have different limitations. Mazur said another problem is that additives used in the freezing process, such as glycerol, can be toxic to certain cells. Bodily rejection of transplanted orgar:,, the most common problem in such operations, could be greatly reduced or possibly even eliminated through freezing, Mazur said. . N.v. 16 ,hr 22, 1978 2 'j BiDGEmET GRADE C TURKEYS FRESH TURKEYS GRADE A TURKEYS NORBEST GRADE A MANOR HOUSE BUTTER BASTED READY TO COOK SELF BASTED 10 to 23 lbs. 10 to 23 lbs. 10 to 23 lbs. Government Lots of White Your Best Inspected! Meat! Buy! lb lb lb with in |
