In just a few minutes the excitement begins anew: the Colorado state legislature reconvenes. With the economy in the doldrums and tax revenues down, it’s going to be an interesting four months under Denver’s golden dome. But what about the kids? What about K-12 education? Ed News Colorado gives us a preview of the speeches and schedules that kick off the new session.

Ed News also takes a look at some of the bigger education issues that figure to be debated. Standardizing a system of concurrent enrollment, creating unique teacher identifiers, adding flexibility to the School Accountability Report, cutting back on CSAP tests, expanding charter school access to bond money – all these figure to be important debates. Given time, I’ll jump into all of them.

For now, though, I wanted to hone in on this one:

There’s talk that several lawmakers are interested in legislation to encourage greater parental involvement in schools, including possibly a bill that would require businesses to give employees time off for school activities. (Similar legislation has gone nowhere in past years.)

I can’t understand why this idea hasn’t passed before. Who could possibly be against more parental involvement? While they’re at it, I hope the legislators make a law that parents have to let us stay up later at night, and make them give us more dessert, too. (Oh, wait, it seems the legislature is planning to debate a “healthy snacks” bill, instead.)

Anyway, how about a bill requiring Santa Claus to give out more toys to those of us who have been good? I’ll shape up my act for that in 2009.

Hey, why not? You may think I’m too young to be cynical at age 5 (almost 6, thank you very much!). Sometimes, though, I just can’t help it. And it only figures to get worse as the legislative session continues.

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