What is the flack about mandates?
The state and federal governments mandate all sorts of programs and services, including the necessity to teach about such topics as the Irish potato famine, bicycle safety, and drug and personal safety issues, as well as to the necessity to sort students into groups of certain size to meet particular identified needs. Also mandated are hundreds of lengthy reports that must be filed by each district annually even though the departments receiving these reports do not have the staff to process or read them. NOT mandated are programs known to help students the most: kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. Mandates cost money to implement, money that is not forthcoming from the groups that demand compliance to them. The recent defibrillator legislation is a case in point. The law requiring the existence of at least one in every school building was passed after district voters had approved the spending plan for the upcoming year, and their cost between $2,000-3,000 apiece had to be taken from oth
