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Mandate Mania

January 13, 2017

In the closing days of the last session of the Michigan Legislature, our public servants introduced many bills that had no chance of passage before the year ended and the bills died. Many of those legislative initiatives were to appease local constituents, and they were merely symbolic gestures.

Introduced during this session-ending period when style points matter more than substance were two bills that caught our attention.

  • House Bill No. 6026, introduced on Nov. 9, 2016, would have required public schools to demand at least two hours of instruction concerning sexual assault and sexual harassment prior to every student’s graduation.

  • House Bill No. 6052, introduced on Nov. 29, 2016, would have required public high schools to demand at least 40 hours of instruction on “sustainability and environmental literacy.”

These are not bad things, of course; but I’m concerned about the increasing burden on our schools.

Not all opponents of these bills should be cast critically. Regardless of the importance of the issues, there is a practical limit to what public schools can be expected to do – especially after their resources have shrunk and their school year has been shortened.

Personally, I would like all schools, both public and nonpublic, to teach all children a second language in early elementary school. I would like students to be “drown-proofed” before they reach middle school.

But I want not one of those things mandated without first removing an existing mandate under which our schools are being forced to operate at this time. No entity can do a good job at some things if it’s being asked to do everything.

I wish all members of the Michigan Legislature who have a mandate in mind for our state’s schools will pause to look for an existing mandate to sunset before proposing any new requirements.

Corporate Care

March 10, 2015

One of the MHSAA’s newest corporate sponsors is arguably one of its most important ever because it will assist the MHSAA’s aspirations to go further beyond the ordinary in promoting student-athlete health and safety.
That new sponsor is Sparrow Health System, and you can read about our new relationship by clicking here.
During the many discussions with Sparrow’s leadership leading up to our partnership, we learned of its membership in the prestigious Mayo Clinic Care Network; and during our review of some of Mayo’s work we reviewed an April 2012 Mayo Clinic article about the risks of concussion in high school football.
The article presented the results of a carefully controlled study of individuals who played high school football in Rochester, Minnesota, during the decade 1946 to 1956.
The conclusion was that those participants did not have an increased risk of later developing dementia, Parkinson’s disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) compared to non-football-playing high school males. The study notes that this was the case even though, compared to today, “there was poorer equipment and less regard for concussions and no rules prohibiting head-first tackling (spearing).”
There is no small supply of data that sheds better light on the head trauma hysteria in sports in general and football in particular. We cite such data as a counter-balance, not as a reason to slow the search for safer ways to conduct school sports. Our new sponsorship is evidence that we are increasing our capacity to do much more.