More than two candidates would have been preferable, but USD 259 appears to have two capable finalists for superintendent. Denise Wren (in photo) is Wichita’s assistant superintendent for high schools and was formerly principal at Wichita North. John Allison is superintendent of the Mt. Lebanon school system in Pennsylvania, though he spent much of his career in the Shawnee Mission school district.
Members of the U.S. House, including all four Kansans, deserve credit for voting 398-24 Wednesday to forgo their automatic pay raise for 2010, leaving most members’ annual salary at $174,000 through that year. That’s a far cry from what Congress did in the Great Depression, when it cut its own pay by 10 percent in 1932 and 5.5 percent in 1933. But it signals that lawmakers understand the lousy symbolism of taking automatic tax-funded raises on Capitol Hill amid an avalanche of job losses across the country.
The Kansas House fired the first shot of the session Thursday in the coal war with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, giving first-round approval to a bill that would green-light the Holcomb plant expansion among other energy initiatives. House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, thinks he has the votes to override Sebelius, should she veto the plant expansion for a fourth time. Maybe he does. But O’Neal and other coal proponents are disregarding reality in pushing the plants when the Obama administration is proposing to tax and regulate carbon emissions, other states are halting or shelving new coal plants, and financing has frozen for other large projects.
Preserving our country’s long-term health requires addressing the growing cost of Social Security, President Obama said during his address to Congress Tuesday. But Obama’s biggest challenge will be convincing his fellow Democrats of this need. Liberals are concerned about possible benefit cuts, while some Democratic strategists worry that Obama’s political capital would be better spent on other priorities, such as health care. But others argue that now is an opportune time to seek bipartisan reform, because the stock market’s collapse has taken the idea of privatizing Social Security off the table. That had been the main stumbling block between Republicans and Democrats.
Though the time frame is too short, it’s good that the Wichita school board is planning to announce the finalists for superintendent today and then to hold public meetings Saturday. District employees (8:30-10:45 a.m.), high school students and media (11 a.m. to noon), and parents and community members (1-4 p.m.) will be able to meet the candidates at Wichita North High School and ask them questions. As United Teachers of Wichita union president Paul Babich noted, there won’t be much time to research the candidates before the Saturday meetings. But at least there will be an opportunity for input. The board earlier had been unsure about whether it would announce finalists and had seemed to care mostly about not wanting to scare off candidates. But if a candidate can’t handle public meetings and some media scrutiny, he shouldn’t be hired.
