Well-meaning lawmakers are weakening public education. Legislators at both the federal and state level consistently promise increased services without funding them, and every time they grant an advocacy group’s demand for services for their constituents, more money and time disappear from the regular educational day.

The most recent example in Washington is the just-passed requirement for schools to observe Disability History Month. Under this law all schools are required to plan and present activities “recognizing the gifts and talents people with disabilities have and the contributions they make to society.” That quotation is from the Web site of state Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, the bill’s sponsor.

Who could vote against such a measure? How would such a vote be portrayed in the next campaign? One can certainly find no fault with recognizing contributions from people with disabilities. But why in schools?

Students are in school about six hours per day. That is already a limited time in which to prepare all of them for college, as both the federal and state governments require. (Never mind that not enough seats exist in colleges for all those students, even if they all could afford it.) When that time is used up to meet the desires of one special interest group after another to get their agendas into schools, it seriously impacts what can be accomplished in the time that remains.

Schools are finding it very difficult to complete their tasks now. What instruction should be left out of the day to make room for Disability History observance? It must replace something, because no open time now exists in the school day. Public schools (and thus taxpayers) spend an enormous amount of money providing a meaningful education for students with disabilities, as well as for “regular” students.

Every time legislators agree to support something like this, or like increased services for students suffering from autism-like symptoms (this is coming next, and it’s expensive), or for classroom programs to eliminate students’ picking on each other, or for training about abstinence from sexual activity, or myriad other special interests, they take time away from instruction.

It is very simple math. Start with six hours of instruction. Subtract however much time you want schools to spend on Disability History. Subtract the time you want them to spend indoctrinating students on moral issues or values. Take away the time needed for any other special agenda that sounds good. What’s left is the time the school has to teach reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, health and all the rest.

It’s a finite number of minutes. Legislating another special program doesn’t add any minutes to the total. It reduces the time available to help students learn. In other words, please tell the school what not to teach, in order to teach the thing your group wants taught.

None of these special programs are evil or without worth. Are they worthy enough, however, to be substituted for meaningful education? Legislators must have enough courage to recognize that public school is a limited resource and to say no to those who desire to substitute their special interest for essential instruction.

Schools have already become treatment centers for mental illness. As funding shortfalls have eliminated treatment opportunities for seriously mentally ill children, it has become the public schools’ responsibility by default to house and treat them. This is not what schools were meant to do, and it requires great expense to meet the legal requirements put in place by legislators who can’t say no and won’t fund the consequences of their decisions.

In the case of Disability History Month, legislators should have said: “That’s a worthwhile cause, worthy of state recognition. October will be Disability History Month.” Period.

It doesn’t need to take the place of something already in school. When it does, something else must go. It is as simple as that. And we cannot afford it.

Public education has been the great equalizer in our country for 200 years. We must preserve this resource and guard it jealously.