Some legislators can hardly legislate and change their clocks at the same time. Professor Reynold Nesiba, Democratic candidate for District 15 Senate, plans to legislate and teach at the same time:
Nesiba, who has been teaching economics at Augustana for 20 years, says that if elected, he plans to reduce his teaching load by buying himself out of his J-term course and one spring semester course.
Should Nesiba win the seat, he would teach two sections of Econ 121 (Principles of Economics II) in a hybrid format during the first five weeks of the semester while he is in Pierre and then return to the classroom full-time. The funds Nesiba forgoes in salary can be used by the department to hire adjunct support as necessary.
“I will guarantee that I will always be here one day a week, and, hopefully, some of the weeks it will be two days,” Nesiba said. When in Pierre, Nesiba would pre-record online lectures for his students. He would use email, online work, and videos to stay in contact with students.
“I have taught this course many times over the summer purely online,” Nesiba said. He said he is confident he can teach the course with “integrity” while in office [Alexandra Peterson, “From Classroom to Capitol: Nesiba Runs for S.D. Senate,” Augustana Mirror, 2016.03.10].
Ah, technology! We have distance learning to keep teachers and students in touch across the prairie. Perhaps we should consider distance legislating to keep our legislators and citizens in touch in their home districts while conducting their committee hearings and floor debates by teleconference.
During last week’s debate over SB 159, the stealth vouchers bill, House Majority Leader Brian Gosch dismissed Rep. Ray Ring’s astute economic analysis of the impact of the bill on public schools by saying he didn’t pay much attention to Professor Ring’s econ lectures back at USD. Perhaps if Professor Nesiba wins a Senate seat, he can invite Rep. Gosch and other legislators to sit in on recordings of his Econ 121 lectures and contribute to panel discussions on the practical application of economics to South Dakota policymaking.
Watch out Reynold they willcall you the crazy proffessor,
There are worse names our opponents could use, Moses! :-)
Hopefully he can teach some economics to other teachers, legislators and bloggers to the fact that it makes no ecomomic sense to take money that would be spent for other things to pay taxes to run government. It makes much more economic sense to take money that would be socked away for increasing some folks wealth rather than taking the money that those with less need to pay for the necessities of life, such as food and shelter.
Of course the legislators like Frerich, who complain about having to pay taxes on his new machinery, forgets that he is getting property tax relief which will partially make up for that increase in sales tax that he pays, and the guy who could use the property tax relief that he got to buy Paul McCartney tickets at 250 a pop or to fly out to Stanford to watch SDSU women play basketball or the Jackrabbit men play at Spokane Washington or probably can take some more of the extra money that he or she has to go to both.