My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a sample:

The West Bend School District is in the news again for promoting adult material to minors, but that controversy, while important, ignores the elephant in the classroom. Let us first discuss books and appropriate material for minors.

 

[…]

 

In most contexts, adults allowing access to, much less showing, graphic sexual material to children would rightly be considered deviant or predatory — like a creepy guy showing porn to his 10-year-old neighbor. In West Bend, as in other communities, there is now a passionate group of adults who insist that access and advocacy of such materials for children in school is paramount and any opposition to such is akin to Goebbels burning books before the Berlin Opera House in 1933. Such bombastic parallelism is the mark of a soft mind and softer morals.

 

With a near infinite amount of material to make available to our children, our government schools are obligated to curate content to the values and customs of the majority of their constituents. San Francisco will have a different perspective than West Bend — or so one would think. With the availability of school choice, parents of any economic means can and should be diligent about putting their kids in environments where the other adults are teaching values contrary to their own. If the school will not support parents, then the parents are obligated to take action in the best interests of their children.

 

While sex and books attract the ire of the community in West Bend of late, left unremarked is how the school district continues to spend the community into oblivion with absolutely no restraint or respect for the taxpayers. Let us consider just four important numbers: 6,623. 5,972. $87.5 million. $108.7 million.

 

According to the West Bend School District, in 2018, the district had 6,623 students and spent a total of $87.58 million. In 2023, they had 5,972 students and budgeted spending a total of $108.7 million (final audited numbers of what they actually spent has not yet been published).

 

That is a 10% decrease in students; a 25% increase in total spending; and a whopping nearly 42% increase in spending per pupil in just five years. During the period of a 10% student decline, spending on staff and on facilities increased. There has been no perceptible effort to reduce spending in proportion to the reduction in the number of students they serve.