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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Rhonda Robinson

Journalist, Illinois Leader
Posted October 18, 2004

Forget Writing...screen for mental health
What's happening to the 3 R's?

Have you ever wondered just why it is that our schools are struggling so?

According to the Illinois State Board of Education web site, “Due to the $6.3 million budget cut to the ISBE budget in the area of assessment, ISBE is barred from assessing students beyond the subject areas required under the No Child Left Behind Act. This change is effective immediately. Therefore the 2005 State Assessments will NOT include the writing, social science, physical development/health, or fine arts assessments.”

So I guess if they are teaching to the test these days, writing has just fallen off the priority list.

However, last year when the Children’s Mental Health Act was voted on in the House, it brought about a rather interesting debate that shed some light on one of the biggest problems schoolteachers face today…legislators.

Those who spoke in favor of the bill played the “if we care about our children” card and won a free pass on the bill that trumped the small minority of legislators who did not want to burden our schools with yet another unfunded mandate.

Rep. Julie Hamos (D-18th District) and sponsor of the bill retold a story she had read in a report from the office of the inspector general for DCFS. She painted the picture of a young mother who was a schizophrenic drug addict raising five children. As it turns out one of these children (who is probably a young adult) is on her way to prison for murder.

Hamos went on to surmise that, “…over the course of her time in the system, she’s cost the state over a million dollars, mainly because she either didn’t have adequate services and then, when they finally discovered something was wrong, they gave her services that cost the state a lot of money. And ultimately, now she will probably cost the state money in some kind of a prison setting. Don’t you think that a bill like this might have identified a person at a younger age that was at risk and been helped sooner rather than to have wait to have cost the state a million plus dollars?”

Hamos went on to explain that, “It really is their teacher, their counselor, the people involved in the school who can best identify what a child may be going through.”

There you have it. Rep. Hamos would have us believe that if we would have had a bill like the Illinois Children’s Mental Health Act, a teacher or counselor (custodian?) could have identified this child as a potential murderer, and with the right mental health intervention, could have saved (a life?) the state a lot of money. They bought it. The bill passed 107 to 5.

A superintendent of a large school district recently told me he was just waiting for the law that will require teachers to cut toenails.

I think its time we relieve our hard-working teachers of the “save the world duty.” Can’t we let them concentrate on the things they truly can do? Teach children to read and yes, write. They need a firm foundation upon which to build their future.

Rep. Jerry Mitchell (R-90th District), who happens to be married to a kindergarten teacher, understood the schools' plight and argued,

“[Teachers] also have a very important task, and that’s called teaching.If all of their time is spent in testing or identifying which child has problems, it cuts into the time that those teachers have to make sure that… that those children get a good basic education. You know, and… and every single mandate that comes down the road to schools is a good one and it is not onerous. However, if you continue to pile mandate after a mandate on our education system, sooner or later it’s gonna crumble under the weight of the various mandates, the various expectations, that we put on ‘em.”

In a representative government we need more state representatives like Rep. Mary Flowers (D-31st) who alone understood the impact not only to the schools but also to families.

Arguing, “The parents have very few rights in this legislation, ladies and gentlemen. Today it’s somebody else’s children, tomorrow it’s gonna be yours…”

Just before an all but unanimous vote, Flowers charged, “This is a very bad piece of legislation. I’m sure it’s gonna fly out of here, but I guarantee each and every last one of you that this will be revisited.”

Rhonda Robinson, is a central Illinois correspondent for the Illinois Leader, a conservative online news source, and her weekly column Across the Fence also appears in the Regional, giving a frank and sometimes-humorous commentary on the social, political and everyday issues affecting family life. Rhonda is a wife, a home schooling mother of nine and grandmother of six.
Her articles can be read at www.illinoisleader.com www.moultriedouglas.com Contact: Rhonda@illinoisleader.com