The war in Iraq wasn’t the only thing U.S. Sixth District Rep. Mike Pence commented on while in Rushville last week for a town hall meeting at the Rush County Senior Center.

Following a question from Wanda Henderson, Pence said he does not support the idea of the federal government becoming more involved in local schools or public education in general.

Pence said that in 2001 he was one of 25 representatives who opposed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and that he still believes local schools should be run by local school boards.

“I didn’t go to Washington, D.C. to make government bigger and I didn’t go to Washington, D.C. so that bureaucrats in Washington could run our schools in Rushville,” he said.

Pence noted that NCLB was a five-year piece of legislation and said he will not support it should congress be asked to reauthorize it.

“My starting point is that we should not reauthorize the bill,” he said. “I don’t hear a lot of admiration for the red tape that has come along with this program. I’m going to be battling to pull back the federal government’s role in our local schools.”

Pence said he favors a block grant approach to education as far as the federal government’s involvement is concerned.

“The mantra here should be resources, not red tape. We will send block grants to the states. For example, we’re going to send the same amount of money to the State of Indiana to support education as we do now, but we’re not going to tell you what to do. If Indiana wants to use it to build charter schools, or if Indiana wants to use it to offer scholarships to inner-city kids who are attending schools where there’s an 80 percent drop-out rate and high incidents of violent crimes and drugs, and you want to give them a scholarship to go to a private school down the street ... whatever the state determines they can use that money for to innovate and improve schools, but not telling them how to do it.”

The congressman said that politicians are drawn to those things people are most interested in, but that isn’t always a good thing.

“I think there’s great peril when federal officials begin to involve themselves in those areas of our national life that ought to be governed at the local level, or the state level at the most. Education is chief among those things,” he concluded.

Rushville Republican Managing Editor Kevin L. Green can be contacted at (765) 932-2222 or via e-mail at kevin.green@cnhimedia.com. Add a comment to this story at www.rushvillerepublican.com.