Zero tolerance, no common sense

Most people would agree that parents should be able to transfer their children out of dangerous public schools. Unfortunately, Gold Dome Democrats aren't most people.

Late last month, Senate Democrats killed a bill that would have allowed parents to move a child from one public school to another in the same system if the student had been a victim of a crime, or if the first school was declared dangerous by the State Board of Education. Sound like a no-brainer? Hold on.

Offered by GOP Sen. Mike Beatty as an amendment to a school safety bill, the transfer provision was approved 28-23, with several Democrats joining the Republican minority in supporting it. Sound like a done deal? Hold on again.

With the amended bill headed for certain passage, Democratic leaders, led by Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, moved in for the kill. Sen. David Scott motioned to adjourn, the legislative day ended and the bill was shipped off to die quietly in the Senate Rules Committee. Unwilling, in an election year, to oppose Beatty's proposal on the record, top Democrats terminated it with a procedural dodge. Such parliamentary maneuvering is an established political art, but even veteran lawmakers had trouble recalling a bill being dispatched in quite the same manner.

Along with Beatty's amendment, Democrats also killed the underlying bill, which would have allowed school officials to use common sense and consider student intent in applying the state's zero tolerance policy toward "weapons" in schools. Zero tolerance, you'll recall, is that well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed bit of legislative excess that does next to nothing to improve school safety while wreaking havoc in the lives of harmless students.

Zero tolerance didn't stop a student gunman from shooting up Heritage High in 1999. It didn't dissuade the sicko who tore into a young girl's skull with a claw hammer at Mountain Park Elementary here in metro Atanta last month. And it won't ever give pause to a determined attacker or homicidal crazy in the future.

But zero tolerance works like a charm when it comes to snaring decent, well-intentioned kids. Like the girl suspended for the toy chain on her Tweety Bird wallet. Or the Eagle Scout busted for leaving a broken ax in his trunk. Or the girl charged with criminal weapons possession for bringing African tribal knives in for extra credit. In ducking and adjourning, Senate Democrats didn't make our schools safe; they simply made them safe for continued absurdities in the name of zero tolerance.

So why did Taylor and the Democrats kill a good bill? With a deft touch for understatement, Beatty told me, "The word 'choice' obviously bothered the [Democratic] leadership." No kidding. Democrats realized Beatty's amendment would have allowed a handful of parents in extreme circumstances to choose their children's public school -- and they were scared witless.

Most Democrats hate the idea of school choice, however limited. With pilot programs demonstrating significant promise, donkey party pols oppose school choice not on facts but on faith -- as an idea squarely at odds with their two-part education program of 1) spend more and 2) defend the status quo.

Such Democrats aren't worried choice will fail but that it will succeed, sending students scrambling for the exits of bad schools and deflating the power of their flush-with-campaign-cash buddies in the teachers unions and the education establishment. And they can't have that.

While Democrats may cast themselves as reformers, it's pretty tough to reform anything when you're so beholden to the status quo that you won't help kids escape dangerous schools.

Beatty dismisses Democratic claims that his proposal was too vague, noting that the amendment explicitly tasked the State Board of Education with determining when a school is dangerous. He also was eager to "work on the language" if Democrats were interested. They weren't.

Gerrymandered out of his north Georgia district by King Roy last summer, Beatty is now running to succeed Taylor as lieutenant governor. "I'll be excited to come back as president of the Senate," he says, acknowledging one of the position's key duties. "When an amendment like this comes through, it will be a whole different story."

As Taylor and his obstructionist Democratic colleagues showed again last month, that day can't come soon enough.

Luke Boggs remembers a time when boys routinely carried pocket knives to school and no one ever got stabbed.