Capital comes to Mullan
MULLAN - A smorgasbord of Idaho state politicians, including Gov. Butch Otter, filed into the Morning Club in Mullan Wednesday for another installment of Capital for a Day - Otter's monthly journey to open a dialogue between small town citizens and the state government.
Approximately 150 residents from the Silver Valley and beyond along with local politicians, business representatives, educators and students followed close behind.
"The events provide local residents an all-day opportunity to have open discussions about government issues with Governor Otter, members of his cabinet and other senior state officials," states a May 13 press release.
Otter stood firm in his support of the controversial Luna Plan which seeks increase technology statewide. The Plan was made up of three bills-two of which slipped through the legislature in March without a snag. The third, SB 1113, did not fare so well and initially called for the elimination of 700 teaching positions statewide, required students to take online classes before graduation and appropriated $53 million for the purchase of computer hardware and software.
After the bill failed to pass it was reworked to provide "flexibility" to local school districts with regard to how they would fund the required technological upgrades.
"I don't think its passing the buck," said Otter. "It's putting the leadership where it's required and that's at the local level - the local level ought to be able to move as fast as it can or as fast as it wants to."
He said it is imperative the Luna Plan be implemented as soon as possible so students will have access to the wealth of information on the Internet.
"(When I was in school) if I had a question about something that was in a book I didn't have a whole myriad of other possible answers I could Google - that could put a search engine to work for me and say 'what does this mean - what is this,'" said Otter. "Now I have that."
The governor said the absence of a teacher in the classroom will not affect learning and in times of fiscal hardship students must be responsible for their personal pursuit of knowledge.