Taxpayers in school districts exercise their democratic right by voting for or against proposed bond issues to fund new building projects.

Sometimes, a new school represents a new lease on life for a small community. But when a bond issue is defeated, it can start a small community on the road to irrelevance. Small towns that lose their schools often start to wither away.

Still, those votes and decisions are in the hands of the local citizens. That is the principle of local control of schools.

Unfortunately, in some local communities, citizens who oppose bond issues are being helped by an outsider whose avowed goal it is to kill off public schools &045; the very action that would hasten the extinction of some small towns.

Paul Dorr, who lives in Iowa where he and his wife have home-schooled their 11 children, hires himself out as a consultant to groups opposing bond issues. He worked with the groups that successfully defeated recent bond issues in Pine Island and Blooming Prairie, and is working with the group opposing a bond issue in Lyle. (That bond issue passed Tuesday night.)

He states clearly in an online posting (www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/dorr1.html) that he is against &uot;statist&uot; education, by which he means public schools. In the posting, &uot;Why I Defeat Government School Bond Levies at the Ballot Box and Do it For a Profit,&uot; Dorr espouses a number of radical, anti-public education positions.

Meanwhile, he’s only too happy to accept fees in the thousands of dollars from citizens in Iowa and Minnesota to help defeat public school bond issues.

Unfortunately, Dorr is not working to support overburdened taxpayers. He’s not working for the future of a community. He’s working, as he admits, to ultimately kill public education.

If he were a Muslim, Jew, Unitarian or Quaker undertaking such action, there would be widespread outrage and condemnation.

Instead, he is being hired by anti-bond issue groups that apparently agree with at least part of his philosophy. In the process, they are harming the future of their communities &045; and not necessarily just by voting down bond issues.

Again, voting on bond issues is the right of citizens in a democracy. Not all school bond issues automatically deserve approval. Information provided by school officials should be challenged and verified, and studied carefully by taxpayers.

All of that should be undertaken, however, for the right reason: To build a stronger community, rather than to destroy the future of a small town and its public school.

&045; Post-Bulletin (Rochester)