Huckabee for President?

"Time" magazine named Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as one of the top 5 governors in November 2005. This shocked me. I had no idea he was making such a name for himself. It scared me, too, because I knew this was the beginning of his journey to the White House.

You see, I am a teacher in Arkansas. Not very many of us like Mike Huckabee. Because he really fed voters a line of bull in order to get re-elected as governor. Promising teacher pay raises, tax cuts and just all kinds of things. But what I remember the most about that election, was the day after. He was sworn back into office for his second term, then BAM! he dropped a bombshell on rural school districts!

The Arkansas State Supreme Court found that Arkansas' school funding proceedure was unconstitutional. They ordered that a fair system be put into place. Huckabee's response was to consolidate schools! He wanted one giant school district per county. This would mean that Arkansas would go from over 300 school districts to 75! Students would be bussed for hours in some cases. Teachers would either lose their jobs or have larger classes. So a huge outcry went to the state capitol.

Huckabee "thought" some more and revised his plan. So now, schools with fewer than 500 students would consolidate with a neighboring school. This plan actually went into affect. Some school buildings now stand empty and are a waste of money because the students are shipped off to another district. Money saved? Court order satisfied? No on both accounts! Nothing has yet been solved! Only more problems created, students uprooted and a lot of people upset!

When a person stops to think about the ideal classroom, I don't think you envision crowded classes and students tired from traveling on a bus. You should envision fewer students in the classroom, thus allowing more one-on-one with the teacher. You should envision students alert and happy to be there.

With smaller class size, test scores go up. Education is what's important. I think Huckabee wanted to be seen as a savior of education, but instead, it's all a bigger mess.

Huckabee wants teacher accountability. What he doesn't realize or understand is that we already hold ourselves accountable. No state or federal mandate will change that. When our students fail, we feel their failure. We go back to the "drawing board" and try to change the way we taught that certain subject. We know how to try to fix things. We know that our students learn in many different ways. We are willing to try new techniques.

Huckabee promised pay increases of at least $3,000 a year. We didn't get that, of course, but we were happy to get whatever crumbs we could get. We didn't quit, we kept teaching.

Another way Huckabee negatively affected our public schools was by forcing a yearly BMI report on all students. Doctors even disagree with this. It is not an accurate way of keeping obesity at bay. What has happenend with my own daughter has been very frightening.

My daughter has always been very tall and thin, never overweight. When her first BMI report came in, I was blown away! She was considered overweight. What happened next was terrifying, though. She QUIT eating. She almost became anorexic, but I got her to the doctor in time. With his help, we got her to see the fault in that BMI report and to see how sickly she had become. She is now at a very healthy, manageable weight.

I understand that Huckabee wants everyone to be fit and thin, but he needs to watch out for reprocussions of his decisions. He could have caused my daughter's death because of a forced BMI!

I could go on and on about how I don't like Mike Huckabee. I have a lot of facts to back me up. But I'll let you do the research of his records and decide for yourself.

I used this website to get some of my information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mike_huckabee. Of course, a lot of what I've written has come from my professional experiences as a teacher in Arkansas and as a mom. So, take my opinion as seriously or as lightly as you want.

I do want to emphasize, though, that he would NOT make a good president because he was NOT a good governor!