Interestingly, it’s not Pat Powers but Scott Ehrisman who suggests that Scott Heidepriem’s representation of the American Indian students suing Mid-Central Educational Cooperative over the GEAR UP scandal could be a political move:
So a Republican friend calls me last night and asked if I saw Scott onStormland TV. Then they speculated that he may be running for governor again since he is involved with this Gear UP lawsuit. I guess I would not go that far, but if Huether is running on the Democratic ticket, I would like to see a primary challenge from someone, even if it is two closet Republicans [Scott Ehrisman, “Get out the Man Purse. Is Heidi-Scott Back?” South Dacola, 2016.06.01].
Heidepriem is one of five lawyers listed on the complaint filed by Alyssa Black Bear last month. John Hinrichs, Kasey Olivier, Ashley Miles, Steven Emery… I suppose any one of them could be running for governor, too… or they and Heidepriem might just be doing their job as lawyers and helping victims of South Dakota’s corruption fight back.
The Department of Education and Melody Schopp are mentioned in the Black Bear complaint but not named as defendants (yet?). Secretary Schopp is distracting herself and the electorate by playing Republican and saying the new federal education laws are too darn complicated:
“My first blush on (ESSA) is that it’s very complicated,” Schopp said. “It’s not like any of us love No Child Left Behind, but it was easy to explain.”
The guidelines add another 200 pages to the existing 1,000-page ESSA law, and Schopp worries that the complexity will inhibit stakeholders from understanding future changes to the state’s education system.
“It should be very explicitly clear, not for the education geeks, (but) for every parent and public taxpayer about what our system is going to look like,” Schopp said Friday [Megan Raposa, “Schopp Concerned About Proposed Education Law Regulations,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2016.05.29].
What? President Obama replaces the Bush-Kennedy law, whose increased federal intervention Mike Rounds once loved, with a law that reinforces state and local control, and Rounds-Daugaard pal Schopp doesn’t like that?
But hey, our Department of Education found it too complicated to manage the federal GEAR UP grant; I suppose Secretary Schopp will struggle to make sense of other federal programs and rules as well.
So if the new fed laws are too complicated for her in competent mind to handle maybe it is time for someone w the leadership and ability to run the department.
Schopp’s mind-numbing incompetence and corruption should get her fired and put in prison. Can she even read. She certainly can’t add nor subtract. Does she even have an original thought?
Did Congress forget to print in bold letters the part about not stealing the funds for personal use?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe anybody in the SD Dept. of Education lost their job because of the corruption, conflicts of interest and embezzlement and that they allowed to occur because of lax or nonexistent oversight in the Gear Up Program. Makes one wonder how many other programs SDDOE mismanaged that we didn’t learn about because nobody died and because our one-party government bottled up the information.
Is it really too much to ask that GOP party officeholders hold their own accountable and put the public interest before the party interest while performing their official duties?
“a law that reinforces state and local control”
Wow Cory, your lack of discernment has reached a new level. The states have been forced to adopt federal control in order to get funding for their under paid teachers. Now that is done, the propagandists say we now can implement local control because the states’ government will be in control.
If the new law truly allowed local control, then Obama would not be pushing the transgender issue down our throats by threating to take away federal money.
So nothing has changed since 1965, other than the grips of the feds has gotten much stronger, because they have taken over the states’ government. This happened via the National Governors’ Association, the Council of State Governments, and other national associations.
Ror, so far, the only people I know of who lost their jobs were people pre-2015 who questioned what was going on in GEAR UP. No one has been canned from DOE. No one in Pierre has been held accountable for sitting on this scandalous activity for six years.
Sibby, you know I support getting rid of externally imposed standards and tests in favor of stronger local control. My discernment is fine. It’s the state DOE is that is stuck in its hamster wheel.
Nice one, Nick. Really it is the Fed’s fault for assuming states hire competent, honest help.