...and why is our fight always with privateers over staffing issues? Schools have been staffing up per pupil for 20 or 40 years depending upon which think tank you ask and they say they can do it cheaper. Probably so.

It isn't really about choice as Roy Herron recently pointed out, plus we have enough C-130s for schoolyards being able to be moved anywhere in the world on a moment's notice.

The challenge really isn't for the Assembly to support and maintain a local public school system. We have top ten graduation rates with bottom ten funding, as Roy Herron also recently pointed out. How do you support and maintain a public, period, county by county? Is it with a regressive tax structure and cheap labor policy? Will arming ourselves jump start our neighborhood economies? The Governor still can't decide whether or not he wants to allow a federal expansion of Medicaid which would support and maintain a hospital for all 95 counties, or if 74 will do.

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When "shall provide" fails, is "We're sorry, here's a coupon toward Your next purchase" a constitutionally acceptable substitute?

Democratic Rep. Gary Odom is questioning whether state Constitution’s Article XI, Section 12, which deals with public education, permits Gov. Bill Haslam’s voucher or “opportunity scholarship legislation.”

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