Well, excuse me for enjoying the new
look of the Capitol dome.
And furthermore, the decision was never
to spend money educating our children or to refurbish the Dome. The
Legislature never considered a bill to either educate our kids or fix
the roof of the Statehouse. The Legislature chose to redo the Dome
because the roof was leaking. And, at the same time, they chose to
spend money on educating our kids. In fact, the Legislature spent as
much money as they wanted to on education. Some would have spent
more, some less.
Every citizen of Topeka is proud of
Topeka High School, a building we are told time and time again was
the first public high school building west of the Mississippi to cost
over $1 million. It was an impressive building when it opened in
1931 and it remains to this day a building that has allowed
generations to marvel at it and understand that Topeka places a high value on
excellence and education. I've always joked that the school board
that approved the cost of constructing Topeka High School was voted
out of office at the next election. I don't know if this is true,
but I'll bet there was someone in Topeka, perhaps named Ebenezer
Ledbetter, who attended the school board meetings and railed against
the profligate spenders who threw all that money at bricks and mortar
instead of books and teachers.
The fact is that we have to do both.
We have to fund education and we have to fix the roof to stop the
leaks.
