Parents Should Be Allowed To Choose To Participate
The Idaho High School Activities Association deserves a Hot Potato for arrogance and failing to learn from past mistakes. Two years ago, it tried to ban foreign exchange students from extracurricular activities. But backed off under public pressure. Now, it’s after the home-schoolers. By a unanimous vote, the 13-member board decided that home-schoolers can’t participate in extracurricular activities such as sports, music, debate, drill team, dance and cheerleading. Says exec Bill Young: “Our members want to send a message. They think that if a school is good enough to participate with, then it’s good enough to attend.” Many home-schoolers don’t trust public schools to educate their children. But they do support the public system through sales, income and property taxes. They have a right to get something back for their dollars.
CHS protesters raise King awareness
Gotta hand it to Coeur d’Alene High kids who took Martin Luther King Jr. Day seriously and staged a mini-walkout when the school didn’t. King epitomized peaceful resistance to an unfair status quo. The students were well-organized and well-behaved. Sure, some left class to be trendy, while others probably were mad they didn’t get the day off. But the ringleaders of the demonstration forced classmates and the community to focus attention on the meaning of the day. In North Idaho, with its lingering reputation for white supremacism, care should be given to teach humanrights principles.
No relief in sight for Idaho D’s
It’s official: Idaho Democrats are on the outside looking in. Okay. Okay. You knew the 53rd Idaho Legislature has the highest percentage of Republican legislators in the nation: 80 percent. But did you know the state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne, tied U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., for the highest percentage of partisan votes in 1994? Yep. Ninety-eight percent. It says so in the Dec. 31 issue of Congressional Quarterly. And Democrats no longer can spell relief, L-A-R-O-C-C-O. Republican conservative Helen Chenoweth has replaced Larry LaRocco in the U.S. House of Representatives. She could end up making Craig and Kempthorne appear moderate, too. After all, Outside magazine refers to her as “James Watt in a skirt.”
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