Editor’s Note: This also came from our new Diaries section, which you can access to publish your opinions on The Hayride by clicking here and typing away.

I am amazed at the Advocates sudden concern for a “real” debate on educational reform. In the “Our Views” section of the opinion page in the Sunday March 18th edition, the Advocate editorial staff penned a piece called “After politics, a real debate.” Basically they and Senator Mary Landrieu, who supported these measures in the past, are upset that these education reform bills are being “rammed” through as the article states.

So let me get this straight, The Advocate, Senator Landrieu, the Teachers Unions, Jindal’s opponents, and the democratic party want to “slow roll” the process. Why? Because they have lost the debate and are stalling for time to gin up support?

It is absolutely a lame argument that these reform bills are being “rammed” through. We have had forty years to debate the problems and solutions. The bills in question are not two thousand page documents that no one read before voting on. Opponents have had years to study and debate the issues.

Governor Jindal was re-elected by roughly 60% of the people who voted. Louisiana has a house and senate controlled by the Republican Party that the people voted into place to do the job. We pay them to READ, study, and debate bills then vote on them. These bills are not so long that those voting “need to pass the bills to see what’s in them.”

The tactics of the opposition are appalling. They are designed to obfuscate, delay, and intimidate. The next rally on the Capitol steps should be parents. Parents who pay for private school and pay taxes to educate others, parents who home school and pay taxes to support an inferior school system, and parents who are trapped in the system with nowhere to go. They should converge on the Capitol steps. Not to intimidate, not to wave insulting signs, not to bog down the system with empty rhetoric, but to demand that the change they voted for takes place.

After all these years of debate, politicking, protesting and squabbling, parents deserve that their voices finally be heard.

Posted as a letter to the editor of the Advocate March 18th, 2012.