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Governor, veterinarian vs. coach, culture Thursday, Jan 5, 2006 By John Brummett Mike Huckabee's appointment of Ben Mays to the state Board of Education certainly would not appear to be cronyism. The governor says that as best he can recall, he's never met the Clinton veterinarian. He doesn't think he's even spoken with him by phone. A nip at the heels of the high school sports juggernaut - that's what the governor was up to, apparently. Huckabee has this aversion to the way local school districts whine to Supreme Court judges about insufficient state money for education while they build swanky athletic facilities. He mentioned it not once, but twice, in his Friday news conference. And he told me Tuesday that he'd always liked and admired the gadfly Mays' work in that area. Perhaps you've heard Mays' story. He was on the Clinton School Board when he encountered a teachers' predicament about inadequate supplies at a time his board colleagues were proposing a major sports investment. The misplaced priority troubled him. He set out to determine just how much the local district spent on sports, but was stymied. He couldn't get the district to break out what it spent to water the football field or provide power to the gym. The district would claim as an academic expense any coach who also supervised study hall. Suspecting logically that Clinton was not unique, this otherwise unassuming country vet became kind of obsessed and something of a crusader. He took his case to the press and the halls of the Capitol. A few policymakers, but not enough, joined him to make the point that in a time of court orders to make schools better, we needed more transparency and accountability in sports spending. The Legislature gave lip service. Any sort of uniform and objective assessment and disclosure of school sports spending remains elusive. Just over the holiday weekend, Mays became perhaps the first Huckabee appointee to post by his real name on the liberal Arkansas Times' ever-lively Web log. He joined a discussion on education spending to write that what we invest now might be enough if we could ever figure out how much was diverted to sports activities that communities ought to finance some other way. And that, coach, is who your governor just elevated to a sanctioned forum on the state Board of Education. "No, I wasn't trying to send a message," Huckabee said. "I just always thought he was making some good points." As is politically necessary, Huckabee says he has nothing against high school football, is a fan and agrees that the spirit of community that arises around local prep sports is a good thing. He says that as long as a district is meeting all requirements to teachers and students and is not bugging the state for more money, it can build all the athletic facilities it wants. But Good Mike is in top form when he says that the state, before sending more court-ordered money to schools, needs to insist on better accountability and more control of local spending. "It's like the state is at a restaurant having dinner," the governor said. "Everybody else in the restaurant has dinner and then brings their tabs to the state's table for the state to pay. Well, OK, if that's how it has to be. But the state needs to start having some input on the menu selections." That's going to be the big rub at the special legislative session. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
