Tagged: politics

Maybe you’re one of the many Kansans who don’t pay an awful lot of attention to the Legislature. We have busy lives, and the idea of wading through news stories about political intrigue in Topeka can make the eyes glaze over and the prospect of rearranging one’s sock drawer sound suddenly appealing.

But while many of us were preoccupied with the necessary duties of running our households, driving the kids around, and gulping down coffee on the way to work each morning, a tireless effort to upend your life has been winning the day in our state’s capitol.

Of all the many lines in the movie “The Wizard of Oz” that are regularly quoted by us cartoonist and commentary types, the one that is probably most often used is spoken by Dorothy. Looking around in amazement at Munchkinland, she says, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”

Driving down Douglas this past Tuesday I couldn’t help noticing a forelorn figure, shaggy head down, slumped despondently on a street-side bench. His large, bare feet instantly identified him to me and I swung over, pulled to a stop in the parking lot beside him, rolled down my window, and said, “Hey Bigfoot, why so sad?”

Surely no one is surprised that parents are very concerned about the proposed boundary changes in Wichita’s school district. Schools are about our children and our children are an emotional subject for all of us. So if you’re going to start messing around with my kid’s school, maybe even closing that school and making my child go elsewhere, then you’ve got some serious explaining to do.