June 22, 2018
Something to Think About - keep (237)
Father’s Day morning I watched Outside the Lines on ESPN. It told about Ernie Johnson – Inside the NBA host with Shack, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith – who with wife Cheryl have 6 kids. Their first 2 were biological and healthy, but they then decided to adopt. From Ernie’s new book comes this excerpt”
Cheryl left for Romania on May 16, 1991. She made her first visit to an orphanage in a village outside Bucharest. On one of those rare occasions when we were able to secure a phone line, Cheryl detailed that visit for me. As she waited in the lobby, a nurse brought out a child. It was a boy, not quite 3 years old. He had been abandoned in a park at birth. He could not walk. He could not speak. On the other end of the phone, my wife was having trouble speaking. She was in tears.
"Hon, I met this little boy today. The first child I saw. The nurse told me, ‘Do not take. Boy is no good.' Ern, he has so many issues, he’s so much more than we said we could handle, but I don’t know if I can go the rest of my life wondering what happened to him."
Her words hung there, demanding a response, for 10 seconds, with neither of us speaking. Sometimes you are captured, even on a scratchy telephone line halfway around the world, not by the words you’re hearing but by how they are spoken. Those words were coming from some inner recess of Cheryl’s heart, someplace not easily accessed, some place for which only an abandoned, hopeless Romanian orphan had the key. Suddenly, all the things we had talked about and all the things we had written in the required adoption paperwork about the severity of a child’s condition we were willing to take on became secondary.
"Then bring him home."
The descriptions of the boy’s condition are worse than you can imagine. One foot turned 90 degrees, unable to chew because he’d never had solid food, unable to speak and eventually diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy!
Ernie explains the reaction from friends to that diagnosis was way too common, something like this:
"I’m so sorry to hear about Michael. I guess if you guys had known he had muscular dystrophy, you wouldn’t have adopted him."
Nothing could have been further from the truth. In as understanding a tone as I could muster, I would explain that we had adopted Michael not with an eye on what he would become, but for who he was – a neglected, forgotten child who deserved another chance.
Wow! Father’s Day morning and I’m coming off a wonderful time with my grandkids and after hearing from my healthy sons it hit home how blessed my family is and how amazing people like Ernie and Cheryl Johnson are.
My tears wouldn’t stop and my respect and admiration for parents who deal with kids like Michael skyrocketed. God bless all parents and especially those who deal with children with special needs.
I’m a very lucky “Papa” Steve Sauder.
Many of you are familiar with the Serenity Prayer. It’s a simple 24-word prayer that has aided many in 12 Step programs as they seek recovery. This prayer is often carried on a coin in one’s pocket. Here it is:
God, grant me the Serenity to accept things I cannot change….
Courage to change the things I can and Wisdom to know the difference.
Recently I ran across The New Serenity Prayer written by Father James Martin, SJ. Here it is:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, which is pretty much everyone, since I’m clearly not you, God. At least the last time I checked.
And while you’re at it, God, please give me the courage to change what I need to change about myself, which is frankly a lot, since, once again, I’m not you, which means I’m not perfect.
It’s better for me to focus on changing myself than to worry about changing other people, who, as you’ll no doubt remember me saying, I cannot change anyway.
Finally, give me the wisdom to just shut up whenever I think that I’m clearly smarter than everyone else in the room, that no one knows what they’re talking about except me, or that I alone have all the answers.
Basically, God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I’m not you.
Amen.
Obviously some great thoughts.
Anyone else think sending a copy of this to the occupant of that big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC makes sense?
I’m Steve Sauder and there’s something to think about!
As the news about Emporia State Baseball Coach Bob Fornelli leaving for Pittsburg State leaked out over the weekend the reactions were swift.
I’ve known Bob since his playing days as a Hornet. He helped me broadcast at the tournament from old Hornet Field; became my son’s JV coach at Emporia High and my oldest son’s American Legion Coach and to complete the cycle when Bob became ESU’s head coach Jamie my youngest son was his first base coach for 2 years. We are pretty close.
Bob Fornelli becoming Emporia State baseball coach when he did was a departure from the norm.
The only other time I remember E-State hiring an active D-II head coach was Bud Elliott from Washburn in the 70’s.
Bob had completed 7 years at Ft. Hays, but his Hornet blood was thick and he jumped at the chance to come home.
This opportunity at Pitt State is about getting on a level playing field. Emporia State athletics are proud – maybe almost to a fault – of “Doing more with less.
Division-II allows for 9 full ride baseball scholarships. ESU funds 4 and supporters make a few more possible, but not the 9 Pitt State and several other MIAA schools are offering.
Bob wants a chance to win a National Championship. He figures he has 10 or 11 more years to do it and despite the fact, it’s “killing him” to leave Emporia.
My colleague here at KVOE, Ron Thomas suggested we should be embarrassed about losing Coach Fornelli to a D-II school.
I disagreed with Ron. I’m envious of Pitt’s ability to fund baseball, but I’m certainly not embarrassed about Emporia State’s efforts.
Coaches succeeding at ESU and then moving on – hopefully up – is what we do.
Dave Bingham, Cindy Stein, Brandon Schneider, Jory Collins, Jerry Kill, Dave Harris and Kristi Bredbenner all left for D-1 jobs. Hopefully, new coaches like Craig Doty and Toby Wynn will have success and 4 or 5 years from now they will moving to D-1 jobs.
In Bob Fornelli’s case – well this is just unique. He moved laterally to come here from Hays and has turned down at least 4 other really good opportunities to go to schools for more money and scholarships. Finally, he decided he needs to give “having more” a shot.
Please note: Bob is not upset with Emporia State – he understands the situation. He, like me, hopes this changes.
Bob will be successful, but I wonder if his success will be much different than it has been at ESU. He will have more dollars to work with, but will be going after the same kids.
Bob’s strength, in my opinion, has been first, his amazing work ethic and second: his ability to mold kids into a team or family as he likes to say. His E-State teams always understood they were “doing more with less” and played with a bit of a chip on their shoulders. Bob’s rarest talent is to get his kids to play that way, but without feeling sorry for themselves!
I’m not sure how that happens in Bob’s new land of plenty?
Good luck Buddy, you will be missed!
I’m Steve Sauder
5-30-18
Here at KVOE, we do “Feel Good Fridays” each Friday to let our listeners know about someone they can feel good about. You know, acts of kindness, helping others etc.
Today my mission is to give each of you an opportunity to Feel Good about yourself. The kind of Feel Good we get when we give a cool gift.
I have two ideas to share with you.
First would be the 2018 Emporia School Supply Project. We talked about this on the Chat a couple of weeks ago. This is the third year of raising funds to buy school supplies for every youngster in Emporia’s 9 public schools plus Sacred Heart and the Christian School.
This project puts each of our youngsters on an even keel with their classmates when school starts. Each student will have all the supplies they need to start school. Without this project, teachers have to wait days for some students to get the notebooks, writing tools and other essentials like Kleenex together. In many cases, the teachers ended supplying many of the supplies.
With over 60% of Emporia school kids on reduced lunches, the need is well documented. Yes, a few kids get supplies they could afford for free but school officials tell us the benefits far outweigh any liabilities.
We also learned there are about 50 students in the school system that are homeless meaning – not able to sleep at home at night. Often all they want is a toothbrush and a bar of soap.
This effort was started by the First United Methodist Church and the church continues to facilitate. Your donation is tax deductible by sending it to the church at 823 Merchant with School Supplies in the memo line.
This is an amazing project with winners everywhere but it isn’t cheap. Nearly $40,000 is needed with the cut off in June. Send what you can to School Supplies c/o First United Methodist Church at 823 Merchant. This guaranteed to make you feel good!
My other ask is time sensitive as Ron’s Ride is tomorrow! For over a decade our Ron Thomas has been mounting a bicycle and riding to Olpe with local law enforcement folks to raise money for the Special Olympics.
This may not sound like a big deal, but we should appreciate Ron’s efforts as he is not really equipped to ride a bike – i.e. short legs, supple girth and zero conditioning, but he continues to abuse himself for this cause. The least we should do is donate.
Please call 342-1400 and simply say your name and amount. Then bring or mail your check to 1420 C of E Drive. We’ll come pick it up if that works better.
Best idea yet would be to write 2 checks – one for School Supplies and the other for Ron’s Ride - and drop them off here at KVOE – heck we will even give you a tour of our studios!
There you have it – two chances to Feel Good about yourself. Try it cause it works!
I’m Steve Sauder.
Saturday morning on Sports Talk we introduced our four KVOE Athletes of the Year.
What a delightful and impressive group!
From Olpe: Brianna Vogts and Damon Schmidt and from Emporia High School: Abbey Stewart and Brent Hastert.
We learned a great deal from these youngsters about role models, leadership and future plans. In the end, they were asked this question: “In light of the rash of school shootings do you feel safe a school?”
Each answered in the affirmative adding, security guards, locked doors, and active shooter drills made them feel safe.
While it’s good to know our students feel safe it is sad they feel safe only because school officials are taking extra measures to protect them.
In Santé Fe, Texas all those things had been done, but still, ten students and teachers lost their lives.
How to fix this situation gets debated every time another student loses their life, but little gets done.
Monday Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education under President Obama suggested maybe parents need to quit sending their sons and daughters to school in protest. He said, “it might take such a radical action to break the political gridlock on this topic.”
While this won’t happen Secretary Duncan is correct about the gridlock.
We all agree banning all guns or certain guns will not fix this problem, but eliminating certain unneeded guns and making the purchase of guns a little more difficult especially for felons and the mentally ill can’t hurt.
Sure, the gun lobby says “you are taking my guns, infringing on my rights and it won’t make any difference.”
You know, they said the same type of thing years ago about seat belts. “You can’t make me wear those things and they don’t protect me anyway!”
The results from strong seat belt laws make those statements look pretty silly.
So, while banning so-called assault weapons and the tools that make guns more automatic and making background checks more effective might not solve the problem we might get surprised by the positive effect such changes could have.
Those changes seem like a small concession in light of the harm being done especially since these events have increased in number in an alarming amount!
Short of keeping our children home from school in protest do you have a better idea?
Our kids should feel safe because they are, not because their schools have become a fortress!
I’m Steve Sauder and there’s something to think about.
Mother's Day was this past Sunday and I blew it off! More on that later.
Actually, Bobbi and I honored our moms and her daughters and my daughters in law with a donation to our church.
Bobbi lost her mom before her fifth birthday and my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease when I was in my late thirties. She had a great deal of influence on me. She was a stickler for things like - saying please and thank you, pulling out chairs for ladies, and opening doors. She was a great mother.
My sons have a great mother. I think Bobbi is a great mother and both her girls are great moms. That leaves my three daughters in law and guess what they too are great mothers.
To say I am surrounded by great moms is an understatement. They all take their duties seriously and are wonderful role models.
So, let's talk about me blowing Mother's Day off this year.
My opportunities to do play by play at KVOE have been reduced greatly over the past few years due to the loss of my sight in my left eye. But, I can still do baseball and for the last 4 years, I've been needed to cover the ESU Hornets in the MIAA Post Season Baseball Tournament. It's a gig I relish, but can't do without a helper. Three years ago my old friend and partner Steve Inwood accompanied me to St. Charles, Missouri, but the three other trips Bobbi has been my helper.
This year the Hornets qualified as the seventh seed so going to Warrensburg on Thursday didn't seem to be a threat to honoring my group of moms on Sunday. But those amazing Hornets had other ideas and Sunday Bobbi and I were headed back to the baseball tournament arising at six A.M. to do so. Happy Mother's Day babe.
Our equipment for doing a baseball game is in a suitcase and weighs about 30 pounds. At Jim Crane Stadium the press box is twenty steps straight up.
We have an elevator in our home so I don't have to climb stairs so guess who pulled that equipment case up those stairs 4 times last week? She also became our producer and engineer after our play by play unit acted up.
As we pulled out of the parking lot on Sunday after 4 days and six games totaling about 18 hours on the air I looked at Bobbi and said “Happy Mother's Day.”
All mothers are special and thankfully God gave them an ability to make the best of any and all situations. Thank you to all the moms out there for your understanding. And especially Bobbi!
I'm “Lucky” Steve Sauder.
National Teacher’s Appreciation Week – shouldn’t every week be “Teacher Appreciation Week?”
If teacher’s jobs were not hard enough the recent acts of violence in schools makes their task even more daunting. Appreciation is the least we should be showing.
When the subject is teachers most of us start thinking about the teacher or teachers who most influenced our lives.
In my case that would a plural. My Senior English teacher comes to mind first. She told my mom “Steve will not pass an hour of college English!.
Al Higgins my Debate Coach challenged me and Mrs. Pitko at Emporia State taught me to write a good business letter.
But it was Richard Doxtator my sophomore English instructor that really inspired me. He made us do things we didn’t want to do like read Shakespeare and Churchill. Doxstator was borderline rude and hard on athletes, but fair.
Most important for me in his class was a quote from Winston Churchill that suggested: “Change is the master key.”
I used that as an excuse or at least qualifier to change jobs some 13 times between finishing college and founding Valu Line – the Telephone Company in 1982.
Admittedly I was pretty much taking the great British leader’s words completely out of context, but NOT being afraid to “change” when opportunity knocked worked for me.
On closer examination, Churchill actually said those words on more than one occasion: Once in the forward to a book about his hobby – painting. And he also said, “Change is the master key. A man can wear out a part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it, just in the same way as he can wear out the elbows of his coat.”
My conclusion is if I hadn’t heard those words in my sophomore English class and salted them away I might have been stuck in a job I didn’t like because I was afraid to change. Unfortunately, many are.
Every one of us had experiences in our school days where we learned a lesson that seemed trivial or unimportant at the time that became useful in later years.
That’s what teachers do – fill our heads with lots of information for us to sift through and decide how and when to use it.
So, Thank You, Teachers, everywhere for your willingness to educate us all in ways we often didn’t understand.
And, by the way, I passed 24 hours of college English with a “B” average.
I’m Steve Sauder and There’s Something to Think About.
PENNY-WISE, POUND-FOOLISH
Sherry Ferguson – Rural Reading
We’ve all heard the phrase “Penny-wise, pound-foolish”. What does it mean? It means to be cautious (wise) with small amounts of money but wasteful (foolish) with larger amounts.
North Lyon County (NLC) residents please remember the November 2017 failed bond election. NLC patrons were asked to approve a $29 million bond to build a new 6-12 facility, plus spend another $3 million out of capital outlay funds to build the athletic complex. The board promised to keep the current elementary facilities in Americus and Reading open. The location of the new facility, one mile from the Emporia School District boundary, was an attempt to stop seventy-nine NLC students (K-12) from attending Emporia Schools.
Each September the local school board and state entities receive the official student headcount used in funding calculations. The NLC Board must have considered these numbers in the district finances in order to make this promise of keeping the two elementary schools open. The new school would have also taken a period of time to design and build. The September 2017 headcounts in NLC elementary schools were approximately forty-eight at Reading in grades (K-5) and a hundred and seven at Americus in grades (K-5). During this school year, Reading has shared teachers in a couple of combined classrooms.
About three months after the bond failed, in February 2018, the board passed a motion to “close” Reading Elementary. Shortly after, a group of teachers and an established not for profit entity, proposed that a charter school with a dyslexia emphasis be created at Reading. A charter school is a school with a specialized mission operated within a school district. These professionals felt it would be a winning solution to put students with special learning needs into classrooms with a smaller number of students and at the same time maybe increase the enrollment in the NLC district. It was anticipated that it could increase enrollment at Reading by 10-20 students the first year. Training of the teachers would have been funded by a grant written by the not for profit entity at no cost to the district.
Studies estimate that one in five students has dyslexia. NLC was handed an opportunity to explore something positive and create a unique identity for our district. It was an opportunity to possibly become early leaders and embrace a critical need area in education. It could have potentially increased enrollment, but more importantly, it was an opportunity to help families struggling with dyslexia issues in our own district and beyond.
Attracting out-of-district students to NLC has been controversial. The difference in cost/risk to the district and the education mission between these two proposals is enormous. The bond proposal asked the patrons to borrow millions for a new school and a new sports complex. ‘New’ could have potentially attracted students to NLC. With the charter school proposal, there was no huge outlay of money, existing facilities were fine. The mission, the hope of the charter school, was to make the reading process easier for students.
The charter school proposal was rejected by the majority of the NLC school board in April, 2018. They also formally closed Reading Elementary at the end of the 2017-18 school year.
Reading Elementary does have a smaller enrollment number but it still contains nearly 1/3 of the total (K-5) population of NLC. There is no guarantee that those students displaced by closing Reading will choose to attend Americus Elementary. In the fall of 2017, fifty-two (K-12) NLC students chose to attend schools in Mission Valley, Osage City, Lebo and SLC schools. Will nearly 1/3 of our (K-5) students decide to follow?
The charter school opportunity did not contain a significant risk to the district nor did it contain a significant cost to the district. Reading Elementary could have been closed, at a later date, if the charter school had failed to thrive.
Is it possible to be “Penny-Unwise and Pound-Foolish”?
"Heredity," is defined as "the passing of traits from parents to their offsprings.
It would have been nice to have inherited a few more things from my dad like his skinny body type or his work ethic, but I didn’t get to choose.
One trait I did get from dad and his dad is poor hearing. My granddad wore hearing aids but heard nothing. You know, grandma's constant instructions might have influenced his hearing.
Dad fought his inability to hear forever. It was amazing how well he masked it.
Personally, hearing aids have been my friend for almost twenty years. I just purchased a new set and they are amazing.
I have been wearing the type that fit in your ear and they were large. People seeing my hearing aids wasn't important, I just needed to hear.
Over the past six months, my ability to understand what was being said became a challenge. In conversations, meetings and especially doing radio interviews my ability to understand was compromised.
Keeping the wax cleaned out of my ears and keeping my hearing devices clean helped, but those were temporary fixes.
A month ago my hearing Doc suggested I do a trial run with new – improved hearing aids.
Interestingly, the trial aides didn't have to be fitted to my ear - one size fits all and the newbies are very light and easy to wear.
They are amazing. While my hearing isn't 20/20 to - coin a phrase - it is much improved.
My new hearing aids can be controlled by an App on my cell phone. I now stream my cell phone into my hearing aids. I hear it ring, but others don't and I hear the callers loud and clear. I can stream the radio or recorded music right into my hearing aids and no one else hears it.
Using Bluetooth wireless technology I can turn my cell phone into a receiving microphone to pick up a speaker at meeting thus having the speech delivered to my hearing aides! There's even a function available to be hooked right into a venue's sound system!
My hearing aids are my new best friend - and they are getting friendlier all the time!
If you have hearing loss and haven't checked in to help you are cheating yourself and those around you. In a word, you are being foolish!
Understand now that if you are around me and I act like I didn't hear you - it's probably because I didn't want to.
I'm Steve Sauder.
One of the better explanations for bad things happening to good people is that without bad things we would not appreciate the good things.
This is especially true for baseball fans.
Our Kansas City Royals are struggling. After winning the World Series in 2015 they have lost player after player through attrition for the most part beyond their control. Some say ownership isn’t willing to pay, but the reality was greener pastures were available for stars like Ben Zobrist, Johnny Cueto, and Kendrys Morales. Unfortunately, we paid Alex Gordon.
In 2016 and 17 Royals management tried to compete keeping Hosmer, Cain, and Moustakas, but lost other key players like Wade Davis and Yordono Ventura.
This year the Royals are in full re-building mode! Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean a roster filled with up and coming prospects, but a group of mostly journeymen while the true prospects are kept in the minor leagues so not to ruin them with premature exposure to the big time.
While these Royals are painful to watch and it’s not like we haven’t had bad baseball in Kansas City before.
I’m old enough to remember the A’s arriving in 1955 – I was 9 years old but still remember Joe DeMaestri, Hector Lopez, Gus Zernial, Vic Power and Harry “Suitcase” Simpson, and Bobby Shantz.
The A’s stayed in Kansas City through the 67 season. They won 69 games twice and 74 games in 1966, but only 62 their last year before owner Charlie Finley moved them to Oakland.
The Kansas City A’s were awful, but who can forget Shantz who was traded to the Yankees where he became the league MVP! How about Marvelous Marv Throneberry and Campy Campaneras. Roger Maris was in Kansas City also. There was even a mechanical rabbit behind home plate to give the umpires baseballs and a mule behind the outfield fence.
The Kansas City Athletics were terrible, but we endured!
In 1969 Ewing Kauffman started the Kansas City Royals. From 69 to 79 the new Royals ramped up and we discovered some cool players with names like Freddy, Cookie, Big John and Famous Amos and a no-hit hurler named Steve. Then came Hal McRae, Frank White, Willie Wilson, Splitt, Leonard, Cone, Sabes, Al Cowans and a guy named George.
There was a period of Yankee frustration but finally a World Series in 1980. Herzog left and Dick Howser took over and the Royals won it all in 85.
But then Kansas City fans suffered for nearly 30 years before having another contender, but the love affair never ended. There have been disputes, a strike, several managers and more, but baseball which can be fickle and cruel survives in Kansas City.
In 2018 our Royals short on talent, but real fans still watch and listen and go to the K. The Royals will no doubt contend again, unfortunately, it may not be in my lifetime!
I’m Steve Sauder.
More...
It’s amazing how many times you can hear TV talking heads suggest “there's a circus going on!” in regards to our national politics.
That’s as good way as any to describe our show with our President and his former FBI Director openly calling each other liars, slimeballs and other terms of endearment.
It is a circus for certain.
It was amusing recently to see Trump supporters defend their guy on FaceBook with: "We didn't hire Trump because we thought he had a squeaky clean past!"
We hired Trump to sweep out the trash......."
Okay, cool, supporters of our sitting president are willing to forgive his earlier transgressions; but what about his conduct since taking office?
Would it be a stretch to think we might have expected President Trump to be truthful, lawful and a role model for morality?
How is he doing?
Truthful is not a term we see used to describe our new President. His exaggerations would be comical if they weren't so frequent and blatant. How on earth can anyone - especially someone with help available to research his claims before he makes them be so sloppy?
Add to this his out and out lies and President Trump is beyond description in regards to the truth.
Our American form of government has been successful in large part because it puts laws before men. President Trump and some of his appointees test this concept almost daily. If not checked our democracy could be in serious peril.
America rightly expects our President to demonstrate moral leadership. A moral code that suggests "if I don't get caught it's okay" is dangerous and accurately describes how the Trump Administration seems to operate.
So my thought or question today for you supporters of President Trump who can forgive his conduct prior to his election - i.e, "We didn't hire Trump because we thought he had a squeaky clean past!" - is how do you accept since his election his struggles with the truth; his willingness to put himself and his administration above the law and his failure to be the moral leader our country expects and demands?
Yes, it's cute to say we knew he wasn't a choir boy, but leading our country is far different from leading a big - even if successful - business.
All this has me really scared because it appears to me that President Trump has too much power and that he demonstrates daily that he lacks the respect needed to handle it. If Donald Trump does not change fast America is headed for a crisis of epic proportion.
I’m Steve Sauder and “There’s something to think about!”
I like and use Facebook a lot. It offers up lots of good information although it has become more and more difficult to discern truth from fiction, but for me, the good far outweighs the bad.
This whole Facebook idea started in a college dorm with Mark Zuckerberg and several friends literally screwing around with the concept of connecting college kids using the internet.
Obviously what they started or stumbled onto has become massive and changed human habits in ways no one could have predicted.
Currently, Facebook is under siege because of their failure to adequately protect the information they have collected about users from outside groups who have used this data for purposes it was not designed for – so we are told.
This has me confused. What or how exactly has this supposed data breach hurt me?
What does Facebook know about me that makes me vulnerable to the Russians, the Democrats or the Trump campaign: My email address? My phone number or mailing address? Where do I work? Maybe, even my social security number? My credit cards have not been compromised, so what?
Maybe I'm naive, no, admittedly I am naïve, but I do not understand.
I do understand if one of these organizations wanting to influence opinion can send a message to 87 million Facebook users with one SEND that's pretty powerful, but how am I hurt? Lots of folks are trying to influence me and most of them bother me a lot more than some strange Facebook message.
Zuckerberg is appearing before Congress and they are roasting him like a pig on a spit. Next Congress will likely develop a plan to regulate Facebook type companies. Regulation might be necessary and helpful, but I'm not so sure given Congress’ track record.
What I don't want Congress to do is "throw the baby out with the bath
water!"
Facebook is fun, informative and more of a positive thing than bad, so please don't ruin it!
I like bragging about the accomplishments of my grandkids and learning about the good things others have accomplished too and I really enjoyed receiving more than 150 Happy Birthday greetings.
Conclusion: Facebook is fun!
I’m Steve Sauder
It’s always good to come home. While we’ve been gone the world situation hasn’t changed that much, but conflict is still rampant with school shootings, gun debates, international tensions escalated and a general fear for the future of our lives as we know them.
Often in the past when situations look very bleak I have suggested prayer as a solution.
While as a Christian this makes me feel better it occurs to me that not all my listeners are believers.
So does that mean I should stop suggesting prayer?
To answer that question my thought is maybe I should try explaining why I see prayer as a good option.
To start that process today I’m sharing with you an Affirmation of Faith recited by the congregation in the church we attend in California. It is a good definition of what Christians believe.
If you are already a believer this can be a good refresher, if you are not a believer or have doubts this hopefully will give you something to ponder.
This is a Lenten Affirmation of Faith.
We believe in God, the creator of heaven and earth, granter of grace and life.
We believe that nothing in all the world can separate us from the love of God, who always forgives a repentant heart.
We believe in Jesus Christ, God in human vesture, who came to love us into new life.
We believe that Jesus took the burden of our sins upon himself and carried that burden to the cross, where he relinquished his own life for our sakes.
This act was his ultimate gift to us.
We believe his death was not the end, but that he was raised from the dead and he will come again one day.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, who speaks truth to all people, in every language.
Our hearts are warmed when we embrace that Spirit, and God’s presence within us is revealed.
As the church, and as members of the body of Christ in the world, we believe we are called to make a difference in the world.
Thanks be to God.
I’m Steve Sauder and There’s Something to Think About!
A study presented to the Legislature last week by Texas A&M researcher Lori Taylor, showed that the average efficiency rate of Kansas schools is 96 percent.
That number backs up a 2017 study from the Kansas Association of School Boards that showed Kansas ranks in the top 10 in an average of student outcomes while its per-pupil spending is below the national average.
Kansas school districts are resourceful. Districts around the state are filled with teachers and administrators who are the heart of education and best know how to try to achieve great things in the classroom. Our teachers and staff are dedicated, and I am grateful and proud our public schools are rated so highly.
Our circumstance, however, is perilous given we are experiencing growing teacher shortages and our average teacher pay is no higher than 42nd in the nation. Our teacher salaries are nearly 8% below Nebraska’s. It is obvious that this has been a decade where school districts, and their individual schools, have had to learn how to function with fewer resources when funding from the state was cut following the 2008 recession and revenue shortfalls in the wake of the 2012 tax reductions.
The Taylor study presented last week was commissioned by the Kansas Legislature which is working to address the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling that Kansas schools are unconstitutionally underfunded. The study clearly confirms, just as the earlier Augenblick and Myers study and the Legislative Post Audit study, that funding matters when it comes to improving education outcomes.
As I have had the opportunity to serve in the legislature and more recently the opportunity to be a close observer of this legislature I am encouraged that in the coming few weeks our Kansas policy makers will successfully meet the school funding challenge.
Having courageously addressed tax reform in the 2017 legislative session, lawmakers have no appetite for raising taxes which I understand. The question then becomes – can we reach the goal of constitutional funding with existing resources?
I believe we can and here is how. First, we can make meaningful changes but confirm the essence of our current and historic school funding formula. This formula has been touted as a model nationally and has been upheld by our Supreme Court.
We can set realistic goals which, while not as aspirational as we might wish, will improve outcomes significantly for Kansas students.
We can draw on available and likely resources which includes current ending balances and revenue which, 8 months into the current fiscal year, is up $270 million. Experts believe that amount will grow. Kansas is currently benefitting from revenue created by tax reform at the federal level. Prospects for resolving the inequity with internet sales tax are better than they have ever been and could also provide meaningful additional revenue to Kansas. The Kansas economy is improving and that will obviously help address K-12 funding challenge as well as other pressing needs.
Any legislative solution will necessarily be phased in over three to five years and I trust the Supreme Court will agree with a responsible phased in plan.
The path ahead for our legislature is daunting but I am confident they will be up to the challenge. I am Don Hill and that is something to think about.
