Mills, mills, mills

At the Campbell County School Board meeting this week, a couple of school board members wanted to table the passage of one and a half mill levies in the spirit of “transparency.”

The district ended up passing the 1 mill for recreation district and the 0.5 mills for BOCHES, just like they do every year.

I’ve already written at length about the merits of the rec mill, but what about BOCHES? How many voters are unaware of what that board does?

BOCHES stands for the Board of Cooperative Higher Education Services. State law allows BOCHES to be created by partnerships between school districts and their nearest community college to provide educational services and to provide a funding mechanism to pay for those services.

Through BOCHES, local high school students can take classes through Gillette College and earn credits that will count toward their eventual college degrees.

I’m all for high school students getting college credits. If they are ambitious and want to do extra work, good on them. Personally, high school classes were all I could handle in high school.

I don’t know why anyone would oppose this. If you’re upset about standardized test scores being too low, wouldn’t you be glad to see that there are some students who are so focused on academics that they’re taking additional classes?

Each year, a handful of high school students receive their associate’s degrees from Gillette College before they get their high school diplomas, thanks to BOCHES.

One school board member said the district is shoving these mill levies down people’s throats. But if the school district isn’t being transparent about these mills, isn’t that the opposite?

Typically, when people complain about something figuratively being shoved down their throats, it’s because they are sick and tired of hearing about it. Not because it’s being snuck past the general public under the cover of darkness.

The two school board members who claimed that the school district needs to be more transparent about their mill levies also serve on the BOCHES board. They should know what BOCHES does.

If their constituents are questioning them on the BOCHES half-mill, then these board members should be well-prepared to explain it to them.

They also were on the school board a year ago, when these mill levies went up for approval. I don’t recall a big ruckus being made back then. I wonder why.

Sometimes it feels like people want information pre-chewed and spoon-fed to them. And that can work for a while, but at some point, the mouth gets tired of chewing, and the hand gets tired of feeding.

People can claim they want transparency, but at what point does personal responsibility come into play?

When I wanted to learn more about BOCHES, here’s what I did: I went to Google, typed in five letters — BOCHES — and I found what I was looking for.

It’s not that difficult.