Start a new Legislative session, and I'm bound to miss some other news. Among stories of note this week:
- Citizen Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is taking a seat on the governing board of the Innovation Campus in Brookings, the town she and her family have lived in for a few years, contrary to propaganda you may have heard to the contrary.
- No wonder SHS is keeping her keester parked in Brookings: the county is the fifth-least stressed place in the country! (But there's even less stress in Brown County---Aberdeen?!)
- Congresswoman Kristi Noem, who failed to take a seat on the House Agriculture committee, wants to rearrange the deck chairs at the State of the Union address. Not sitting by party would make it harder to learn where the parties literally stand on issues. I prefer sitting boy-girl-boy-girl: park Noem between Anothony Weiner and Dennis Kucinich. (Actually, Congress would have to sit boy-boy-boy-boy-boy-girl!-boy-boy-boy....)
- All that time in classroom seats monkeying with computers isn't rubbing off on all of our kids: two out of five South Dakota eighth-graders scored poorly on the Technology Literacy Assessment, which tests kids on basic computer skills like changing margins on a document. I'd love to give this test to a random sample of South Dakota adults... and to our State Legislature.
- Rep. David Lust wants to triple or quadruple the cost of a classroom seat at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology by letting it go private. Privatize Mines, and I predict half the seats go empty, as bargain-hunters go to SDSU for engineering and status-seekers go to newly cost-equivalent bigger schools elsewhere.