A year ago, Kansas Board of Ed. mem­ber Con­nie Mor­ris got in hot water. She went to a con­fer­ence on mag­net schools, stayed in a hotel that charges as much per night as lots of peo­ple spend on month­ly rent, and she does­n’t even rep­re­sent any mag­net schools. In the midst of a scan­dal about the thou­sands of dol­lars the state was spend­ing to import cre­ation­ists, Con­nie was com­pelled to pay back some of the costs, espe­cial­ly when her receipts did­n’t add up. If she stayed in a hotel close to the con­fer­ence, why did she need to spend mon­ey on a rental car?

Hav­ing lost her bid for re-elec­tion, Con­nie ought to be work­ing on a sequel to her mem­oirs. I’m sure we’re all anx­ious to learn about the sex, drug and rock-‘n’-roll adven­tures on a school board. Alas, we will all have to wait, because the Jour­nal World reports “Mor­ris to trav­el to D.C. weeks before term ends”:

Kansas State Board of Edu­ca­tion mem­ber Con­nie Mor­ris will be in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., at tax­pay­er expense two weeks before her term expires.

With­out com­ment, the State Board of Edu­ca­tion on Wednes­day unan­i­mous­ly approved a request from Mor­ris to have her trav­el and expens­es paid for a vis­it to D.C. from Dec. 16–23. Her board salary of approx­i­mate­ly $87 per day for six of those days also would be paid under the request.

The rea­son for the D.C. trip, Mor­ris stat­ed on her request form, was to have mul­ti­ple meet­ings with immi­gra­tion and edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tions and oth­er elect­ed officials.

The board also approved Mor­ris’ trav­el request to attend a con­fer­ence Oct. 13–14 in Bloom­ing­ton, Minn., of a group called EdWatch, Edu­ca­tion for a FREE nation.

The group will fea­ture speak­ers on sub­jects such as:

• How inter­na­tion­al bac­calau­re­ate under­mines Amer­i­can citizenship;

• How men­tal health screen­ing affects gun own­er­ship rights;

• Minor­i­ty and low-income fam­i­lies as psy­chi­atric guinea pigs.

Yes indeedy. Can’t imag­ine why no one want­ed to re-elect this class act.

For what it’s worth, EdWatch seems to think that the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion is a com­mu­nist con­spir­a­cy of some sort, and “is com­mit­ted to edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the unprece­dent­ed move­ment of the U.S. work­force, the U.S. econ­o­my and the entire edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem toward a cen­tral­ly planned and con­trolled fed­er­al sys­tem.” They also have some sort of beef with the essays on the SAT. Why ask­ing stu­dents to “write an essay that requires them to take a posi­tion on an issue and use exam­ples to sup­port their posi­tion” is going to lead to the com­mu­nist take-over gets a bit fuzzy. The best thing to do is head over to the Mungers’ and take the test your­self.