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South Dakota State Of The State Address
01/22/2002
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Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you.
Madam Lieutenant Governor, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Legislature, and you Ladies and Gentlemen of the Supreme Court and Constitutional Officers.
If I could, I'd like to start off today by introducing a new position for an old member of one of the branches of government. Under our system, the justices of the Supreme Court select for a term the Chief Justice of this State, and the justices of our Supreme Court have seen fit to select as the new Chief Justice for the State of South Dakota David O. Gilbertson. Justice Gilbertson.
There is one other group that I would like to introduce today. It's really the last chance that I'll ever get to do this. They are a group that has really been as much a part of me as myself virtually my entire public career and even before that. Today I have with me in the back of the room behind these House Chambers Mary Dean, our son Russell, his daughter Lindsey and Will, our daughter Pam and her husband Randy, our daughter Shonna and her husband Bill and their two children, little Daniel and little Emma. That's little Daniel back there waving at me.
I want you all to know that one of the things that you really get blessed with in life is to have a family, especially a family like mine who have had a terribly easy time in life living with me. But, I want to thank each and every one of you. You are more than special. You're the same thing that families mean to everybody, and thank you for coming. Thank you, frankly, for always being there whenever I felt that there had to be somebody or you felt there had to be somebody to take care of me. You're a marvelous group of people. And thank you, all.
What I've done today is decide to come and give you a report on the state of the state, and I'm trying to do it a little bit different way. I'm going to really break this report into two parts, the report of where we're at because of where we've been and the road we've traveled, and then what the challenges are that we have to deal with. What I am going to try to do today is to really address both those kinds of things, recognizing that we've done a lot together. We truly have done a lot together.
Way back when I first became involved in running for Governor years ago, I said there were four perspectives that I felt I would always have to bring to public life if I were successful.
One, you always put taxpayers first.
Two, we have a responsibility in government to provide for the public education of our citizens.
Three, we have a responsibility to protect the people and the property within our sovereign sphere.
And four, we have an absolute responsibility to care for people who can't care for themselves. We get into fights at times as to at what point should people start taking care of themselves or at what point should they be fully responsible for themselves, but we never get into a fight where we're taking care of people who truly can't help themselves.
We get into arguments about what ought to be against the law, and if it is against the law, what should be the penalty, and if you get a penalty, for how long should you be penalized. But none of us argue that we need a system whereby we can maintain the protectoral integrity of the people and the property within this state.
There could be no one who I've ever heard argue that every one of us doesn't have a fundamental responsibility to make sure that we provide a quality educational opportunity for every child and every adult in this state that wants one. Can we afford all we want? No, we can't, and we have never been able to throughout our history. But the really important question is, Are we always moving forward in the right direction, closing the gap that we have to close to provide for a quality educational experience?
Finally, do we truly put taxpayers first, recognizing how important that truly is? There is no such thing as government money. There is no such thing as federal money or state money. Money is paid by human beings. No corporation pays taxes. They get their money from people. No business pays taxes. It gets its money from people and the owners. Individuals who earn pay taxes, and it is the earnings that they have that give them the ability to go out and make the purchases and make our economy move.
Way back when I was running for Governor eight years ago, my opponent and I both said that we would cut property taxes 30 percent. Every member of the other party, my friends that are Democrats, picked up the pledge and said they would cut property taxes 30 percent. Every member of my party made a public pledge. We would cut property taxes 30 percent, and we worked hard to deliver on that after the election was over.
If you take a look at this chart, what you can see is the success of that program. When I hear people that say, "I can't afford any more property tax relief," I know I am usually dealing with someone who's got rapidly appreciating value property or doesn't quite shoot square with people, one or the other. Because, the reality of the situation is, you can see by the blue lines on that chart what taxes were in property tax collections going back to 1983. You can see the huge rises that started to take place in '92, '93, '94, '95 that brought about a citizens' revolt. When Jim Beddow and I were running for Governor years ago, at every single debate, every single question by the media, every public appearance, the first question always was, What are you going to do about property taxes? That was always the dominant issue. As a matter of fact, we had an election that year where our people voted on a constitutional referendum that had been created by initiative. That constitutional referendum, rolling back over about $300 million to $500 million of taxes, lost by less than 1600 votes. In a statewide election, only 1600 votes separated the victory from the loss on the various sides on that issue. That's how angry our people were at property taxes.
You Ladies and Gentlemen that were in the Legislature then and ourselves, we went to work on this. We rolled up our sleeves, and it wasn't easy, but we'd made a promise. And, if your word is not any good, nothing about you is very good.
So, you can see that it took us more than four years. It took us several years, but we were able to achieve that 30 percent rollback for homeowners and agriculture property. What you see in the yellow are the payments that have been made the last six years into the funding of the schools. That's money that would have been paid by property taxpayers had we had the old system still in place. We kept our word. We kept our bond with the public.
Let's look at some of the things that have taken place over the last several years in South Dakota. Yeah, part of this is bragging. I understand that, my friends. But it is not just me bragging. As you look at this list, you'll see almost all of it required you, Ladies and Gentlemen, to be partners, to be a part of it. Frankly, some of you never voted for any of it. You were against it all, but we have people that wake up in the morning and their glass is always half full. Thank God most of the people in this state wake up in the morning and most of their glasses are not half empty. That's how you look at it. That's how you really look at it.
In the Digital State Survey for the second year in a row, South Dakota is number one in the nation. This is the only time in the history of keeping these surveys that a state has repeated as number one in education. You can see on this column what's happened in moving forward from 1997 to where we are today in the various categories that there are up therea phenomenal achievement by a little old state like South Dakota, a state without many resources.
As you look forward at where we are with respect to technology in schoolsand I'm not going to go through the whole thing, because you are all so familiar with it. But, you can see, back in 1999, not very long ago, two legislative terms ago, you can see that there were only 1800 K-12 educators on E-mail. Today, there are 9900 educators within our K-12 school system on the State's E-mail system. Last year, 4.5 million E-mails transpired between them in the first three months of the school year or this past school fall. Think of that. In September, October, and November, there were 4.5 million messages that went back and forth between the various educators in this state connecting with each other over the E-mail system.
We've got 1119 high school students today that are taking courses via the Dakota Digital Network, our network that we've all set up that you folks and I fund with the people's money where the state pays it all. We've got 1119 high school students taking all those courses that you see up there; Spanish I, II, III; anatomy; art; calculus; chemistry; college algebra. And this is just the beginning. This is honestly growing almostit's arithmetically, but I say almost geometricallyin terms of this phenomenal growth that's taking place since these schools have really bitten into it, and Northern State University has really started to aggressively come forward.
As a matter of fact, let's look at some of the things we've done together in K-12 education, stuff that I'll call out of the ordinary, out of the ordinary.
We wrote a new state aid formula. In most states in this country, it has had to be done by judicial decree. It has had to be done by court order because they had unfair formulas. We had the political will between us all to sit down and write a formula back in 1995. A whole slew of peopleJan Nicolay and Barb Everist and many of you Legislators, Dave Knudsonrolled up their sleeves and went to work. We got a new state aid formula and a new special aid formula. Other than the fact that some people complain about the special moneys that we created for the smaller schoolsfor all the schools that have less than 600 students in increasing proportion until you get to the point where schools under 200 K-12 students are treated as having six students for every five that they have. Other than that one factor, this is the fairest formula on the planet, because it is based on the community's ability to pay and wealth. So all students, all students are treated equally under our formula.
We've wired 622 public school buildings, all the private school buildings that wanted to be wired, every public university, every private university, and every public library. There is no question we are ready for the next millennium, the one that we're in, with respect to the technology base that's in place.
There is not a state in the Union that has a course for teachers, their classroom educators, that goes to 200 hours to learn how to utilize technology. Forty percent of all the classroom teachers in this state, 40 percent, four out of every ten drawing a paycheck for being teachers or educators, have been through that TTL course that has a minimum of 200 hours of instruction in how to utilize technology to enhance learning.
By the way, folks, these folks are incredibly valuable, because there is a shortage of them. There are none in the world. We have a corner on the market in terms of our percentage, and they are living proof that every time you give someone advanced skills in South Dakota, they're not going to run away someplace else and work, even though they can make more money virtually anyplace they go. So, as we look and we examine in other areas where we have to make special efforts, we should remember. Just because we help somebody educate themselves in life does not mean they are always going to run away and go someplace else and take advantage of the financial opportunity. There are all kinds of considerations people make. Most of the people in this room could make more money had they lived someplace else, but there are reasons people make decisions on where they want to live. In the world we live in today, there are going to be a lot more people that are going to be wanting to move home as we create new opportunities for them and their spouses and their children.
Our open enrollment program has been phenomenally successful. The first year, 1598 students transferred between schools, and this does not include transfers within a school district. It includes transfers from one district to another in a year. The second year, it was 2000. The third year, it was 3800. This is growing at the rate of about a thousand a year. Over three years, 8300 opportunities have taken place by students moving between school districts.
We passed content standards. This was a battle. This was tough. Just two weeks ago at a public hearing, one of the people at the public hearing complained that the standards were too tough. Were they expected to teach to the standards? If you teach to the standards, the content standards, the students are going to be able to pass the tests. But, more important than passing the test, they'll have the fundamental knowledge in the subject matter that they have to have to get ahead in life, to go to the next grade, to go to the next phase of their life.
We've got a reading enhancement program. I've just been invitedabout two weeks ago, I got an invitation to go down, the latter part of this month, to Houston, Texas. I'll bring a team of people from the State, to go with the federal Secretary of Education to attend a convocation or seminar where they want to discuss what we can do in America about trying to do something about increasing the reading levels. Ladies and Gentlemen, we've done it. Two years ago, we brought you a program on about a week's notice after having visited with a gentleman in the Sioux Falls School District and the teachers. I had the privilege of meeting with all the teachers of the year in South Dakota that came to my house one day. I won't mention their names, because I promised them I wouldn't burn them. So, I won't do that, but they came and we had a marvelous meeting.
We all talked about the importance of reading, so out of it came this program. We couldn't afford to do Reading Recovery and Sylvan Learning and some of the specialized, expensive courses. So, we put good minds together from Sioux Falls College, the University of South Dakota, SDSU, several of our schools. We put people together in the public school systems and the Department of Education. They came up with a curriculum that you folks funded at our request. Last year, it was so successful, a year ago now, that we asked you to expand the program. By popular demand, it was asked, don't take it to the first and second. Take it to the first, second, and third grades, and let's accelerate it and get it done quicker.
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