Because no matter how hard humans try, wish or demand, natural law always wins. Thank God it does. I mean, where would our lives be without the law of gravity, the law of relativity, the law of attraction and the rest of the laws governing the universe? In total disorder, that’s where. Or, in relation to the headline, a fiscal, directionless mess.

Most of us realize natural and universal laws govern our lives.  Like it or not, realized or not, we try to live within them because we know what living outside them causes.

But there’s one entity that’s never governed by natural laws — or, for that  matter, constitutional laws. Ironically, the entity that refuses to be governed is, of course, government. While all areas of government have their claims to fame for ignoring these laws with disastrous results, one above the rest is in education. And in Mesa County, that’s School District 51.

This isn’t an indictment of the recently elected school board. Well, not completely. (You’ll see later in the column.) For full disclosure, I voted for all the winners. Rather, this is a turning of the tassel as they navigate the difficult waters from a riptide of students leaving; aging real estate; and accommodating what’s sure to be upset parents and worse, the selfishness of the teachers’ union, in creating a fiscally responsible way for D51 to move forward. Life is difficult enough for board members who inherited the misguided ways and edicts of our previous superintendent, the Taj Mahal under construction on Fifth Street and the indoctrinating mess disguised as curriculum. And let’s be honest, previous boards would simply ask voters to pass another bond measure.

But that’s where we are. Poor fiscal decisions after poor operational decisions entwined with the laws of human geography (they do teach that) and human nature have created this obvious point: The law of economics says it’s time to close some schools.

“Easy for me to say,” you might counter. “It doesn’t affect you or your child.” You’d be right. But you’d also be wrong. Because the law of economics doesn’t care about my situation. “The board is simply doing what you want it to do.” I don’t want any school to close, so no. Or the bond-passing favorite, “You just hate kids!” While I’ll admit there are many I don’t care for, I want them to get a quality education if for no other reason than to grow up and replace the economically clueless politicians and bureaucrats we tolerate today.

I didn’t vote for the new school board members to do my bidding. I voted for them to do the right thing. If they did what I wanted, the old superintendent would have never gotten the opportunity to retire, the new one wouldn’t be in place and one of the most expensive high schools built in American history would have been defunded and split to build three or four new schools. And that’s just for the first week in office. But none of that matters as the board takes up what our administrators and previous boards have avoided for decades: fiscal responsibility.

Here’s the scenario in a nutshell. A flood of students leave D51 every year. I’m not going to go into the reason. That would take a doctoral thesis, and education already has too many educated educators. Simply put, D51 has way too much capacity for way too few students. Think Detroit with space for 2 million people, but only 500,000 or so who actually live there. Or perhaps General Motors, which built more cars than the market wanted. Both are serious problems. Both are great examples because they involved taxpayer money.

We can imitate Detroit and talk about it and do nothing while losing more residents due to lack of services and poor fiscal management. Or we can imitate GM and reduce capacity to match the demand of the market by closing facilities and trimming costs. Look at Detroit today. The same whirlpool of problems. Look at GM today. Doing well minus Saturn and Pontiac.

Two different results by two different applications of the law of economics. One ignored it and one applied it. The one that ignored it still faces a fiscal mess with worsening problems. The one that applied it faced employee difficulties, relocated staff, closed facilities and survived the public relations nightmare. But it make the hard decisions to become fiscally responsible.

Now you might say District 51 has no right to close my school and send my kids elsewhere. You’d be wrong. District 51 has been telling you where to send your kids to school and limiting your parenting choices since its inception. Why do you think charter schools fill up in a week once announced?

We should thank the D51 board of education for facing this problem head-on
while applying the law of economics.
It will hurt, but it also will allow D51 to make the needed changes to improve its fiscal situation and provide the quality education our children deserve. Which is its mandate.

Let’s just hope D51 starts teaching economics again so folks understand this.

Craig Hall is owner and publisher of the Business Times. Reach him at 424-5133 or publisher@thebusinesstimes.com.