From the campaign
Parents Decide. Teachers Teach. Where I Stand on Education.
School started today. This afternoon I will ask my nine year old what he learned and he will say nothing. The real version of that question is one I cannot answer either, and fixing that is most of my education plan.
My son went back to school today. He is nine.
This afternoon I will pick him up and ask what he learned, and he will tell me "nothing." Every parent in District 32 knows that answer. We laugh about it, and we probably should, because asking a nine year old to summarize six hours of his own life is not a fair thing to ask of anybody.
The joke stopped being funny to me a while back, though, because I realized I cannot answer the question either. Not the way a parent ought to be able to. What is he being taught, who chose it, and why would a parent have to file paperwork to find out?
I am asking for one of your two votes for State House in District 32, downtown and North Rapid City. Education comes up at almost every door I knock, and not only from parents. Teachers bring it up. So do grandparents raising grandkids, and people whose own kids graduated fifteen years ago. The specific complaint changes house to house. The shape of it never does. The adults closest to these kids have the least say over their education, and the people furthest from the classroom have the most.
My plan runs four sentences. Parents decide. Teachers teach. Students learn. Bureaucracy steps aside.
Here is what each one looks like written as a bill.
Curriculum in the statute, not on a webpage
I want curriculum transparency required by state law, rather than a district page that relocates every semester or a records request that comes back six weeks later and half redacted. Put it in statute, so any parent can see what their child is being taught without needing anyone's permission to look.
You pay for these schools. You sent your kids into them this morning. Reading the curriculum is not a courtesy the district extends when it has the staff time. It should be a right you can point at in the code.
Cap administrator pay while teachers are underpaid
Teachers in this state are underpaid. We say so every year, in every election, and every year the money finds somewhere else to be. Administration tends to do fine.
So, a cap on administrator pay in taxpayer-funded districts, and teacher pay treated like the priority that everyone already claims it is. The adults who stand in front of our kids all day should not be last in line.
Stop sending taxpayers the lobbying bill
Dollars appropriated for classrooms can currently end up buying political influence in Pierre. Think about what that actually is. Government is using your money to lobby government for more of your money.
Superintendents can still testify. Board members can still advocate. Teachers and parents can call their legislators like any other citizen, and I hope they do it more. What ends is billing you for professional lobbying. I spent two legislative sessions in that Capitol fighting for family legislation as a private citizen, and nobody handed me a taxpayer-funded lobbyist to do it with.
Let the money follow the kid
Education funding exists to educate a child. It does not exist to fund a building, or a district office, or a line on an organizational chart. When the funding follows the student, every family here gets what wealthy families have always quietly held: the ability to pick the school that actually fits their kid. Public, private, or somewhere in between. The family decides, because the family is the one that has to live with the decision.
Nobody gets forced anywhere, either. If the public school down the block is the right fit, and for most families it will be, the funding follows your kid right through that door.
The part I will not dress up
Every position above draws fire, and some of it is fair. The five objections I hear most often are answered below this post, in the same words I use when somebody raises them on a doorstep. If you think I am wrong, come find me and say so. I would rather have that conversation in August than read about it in October.
I am a dad before I am a candidate, and each of these runs through one test at my kitchen table. Does it put parents, teachers, and students first, or does it feed the thing sitting between them? District 32's kids do not belong to a system. They belong to their families.
Strong Families. Strong South Dakota.
You get two votes for State House on November 3. I am asking for one of them. The full Education Reform plank and the rest of the platform are at zac4sd.com.
Anticipated pushbacks · prepared responses
Common questions on this issue
These are the questions and concerns that come up most often. The responses below are my honest answers, not talking points.
- Q. School choice will gut public schools.
- A. A good public school has nothing to fear from a family that has options. Most families will keep choosing the school down the street, because it is close, it is familiar, and when it is doing its job there is no reason to leave. Choice does not punish a good school. It gives families a way to hold a failing one accountable, which right now they mostly cannot do beyond writing an angry Facebook post. The money exists to serve the child. That is the whole principle.
- Q. Curriculum transparency is an attack on teachers.
- A. It protects them. A teacher who is proud of a lesson has nothing to hide, and transparency is not aimed at the teacher in the first place. It is aimed at the layers between the parent and the classroom, where curriculum gets decided without either of them in the room. When the curriculum is public, a teacher is never left alone defending a decision that was made well above their pay grade.
- Q. Capping administrator pay is government overreach.
- A. If a private company wants to pay its executives a fortune, that is its business. A public school district runs on tax dollars, and the public gets a say in how those dollars are spent. That is not overreach, it is ownership. When administrator pay climbs while teacher pay stalls, that is a priorities problem, and the legislature is what sets the rules for how public education money moves. Cap the top. Pay the classroom.
- Q. Districts need a voice in Pierre.
- A. They have one, and nobody is taking it away. Testify. Advocate. Show up. I spent two sessions at the Capitol fighting for family legislation as a citizen advocate, and nobody handed me a taxpayer-funded lobbyist. What ends is billing taxpayers for professional political lobbying. If the argument for more school funding is a strong one, it can win on its merits without a paid lobbyist making it on your dime.
- Q. School choice is a handout to families who already have options.
- A. It is the reverse. Wealthy families have always had school choice, and they buy it with a tuition check or a mortgage in the right neighborhood. A family renting in North Rapid has no such lever. When funding follows the student, every parent in this district holds the power that wealthy parents have always held. And nobody is forced anywhere: if the public school down the street is the right fit, the funding follows your kid right there. Choice that only money can buy is not choice, it is a privilege. I want the version every family gets.