Blake Moore: “I want to thank the gentlemen for responding, even though they are opposed. Let me say that I am old enough to have gone…”

“I want to thank the gentlemen for responding, even though they are opposed. Let me say that I am old enough to have gone through several gubernatorial races; and Governors run for office based on crime prevention and crime control, economic development, lowering taxes, environmental protection, and even welfare reform. And so the public in many States have elected to elect separate constitutional officers that deal solely with educational opportunity. And by not adopting this amendment, we are literally cutting off the legs of the statewide constitutional officers to do the only duty for which they are elected, and that is for educational purposes, and transferring those duties to a Governor whose agenda may have nothing to do with education at all. With respect to the notion that the Governor has to work with the statewide superintendent of public instruction, under current law right now, superintendents do work with the Governor. And so I am sad that this is being opposed by both the majority and the minority on this committee because I do think that, rather than expanding opportunities for these 420,000 charter school students, it is going to really put them all under the purview of some ideology of some Governor, Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever. They are going to be subsumed by ideology instead of under the purview of a publicly elected State public instruction superintendent. I yield back the balance of my time.”