The Committee on Legislative Procedure respectfully reports that the Chief Clerk of the
House has had under consideration the House Journal of the third day.
All errors, typographical or otherwise, are duly marked in the temporary journal for
correction.
And we hereby move the adoption of the report.
Your Joint-Select Committee appointed to make arrangements for a Memorial Service for
deceased former members of the South Dakota House and Senate respectfully reports that they
recommend that the Senate and House of Representatives recess and convene in the House
Chamber at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 18, 2001, and that a Joint Memorial Resolution be
introduced in their memory by their colleagues in the Senate and House of Representatives.
A short program will follow the introduction of the Memorial Resolution. At the
conclusion of the Memorial Service, the Senate will retire to the Senate Chamber and continue
with its regular order of business.
The memorial resolution shall be printed in the House and Senate Journals.
Respectfully submitted, Respectfully submitted,
Orville Smidt Cheryl Madden
Clarence Kooistra J.E. "Jim" Putnam
Gerald Lange John Reedy
House Committee Senate Committee
MR. SPEAKER:
Your Select Committee appointed on House rules respectfully reports that it has had under
consideration the House rules and recommends that the temporary House rules become the
permanent House rules of the Seventy-sixth Legislative Session with the following exceptions:
H3-1. Appointment of standing committees. The speaker of the House of Representatives shall, with advice from the minority leader, appoint the members of the following standing committees with the number of members as indicated after each committee and shall appoint the chair and vice chair of each committee:
In the absence of the committee chair, the vice chair shall act as chair. The speaker and speaker
pro tempore are members of the legislative procedure committee, and the speaker shall serve
as chair of the legislative procedure committee.
Respectfully submitted,
Scott Eccarius
Bill Peterson
Mel Olson
House Select Committee
HB 1072
Introduced by:
Representative Duenwald and Senator Diedrich (Larry)
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
define the theft of certain livestock as grand theft.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Agriculture and Natural
Resources.
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
revise certain procedures related to livestock brands,
proof of livestock ownership, and livestock ownership inspection.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Agriculture and Natural
Resources.
HB 1074
Introduced by:
Representatives Monroe, Flowers, Kloucek, McCoy, Napoli, and
Van Gerpen and Senators Sutton (Dan), Kleven, McIntyre, and Putnam
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
prohibit discrimination against health care providers
by health insurers.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Health and Human Services.
HB 1075
Introduced by:
The Committee on Judiciary at the request of the Chief Justice
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
modify certain procedures for grand jury returns.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Judiciary.
HB 1076
Introduced by:
The Committee on Judiciary at the request of the Chief Justice
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
revise certain provisions relating to the suspension
and revocation of drivers' licenses and permits.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Judiciary.
HB 1077
Introduced by:
The Committee on Judiciary at the request of the Chief Justice
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
permit the court to impose certain costs and fees as
part of the disposition for a child adjudicated as a child in need of supervision.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Judiciary.
HB 1078
Introduced by:
The Committee on Judiciary at the request of the Chief Justice
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
permit the court to impose certain costs and fees as
part of the disposition for a delinquent child.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Judiciary.
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to
repeal certain provisions that determine the situs
of the offense of underage possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Was read the first time and referred to the Committee on Judiciary.
HB 1073
Introduced by:
Representative Duenwald and Senator Diedrich (Larry)
HB 1079
Introduced by:
The Committee on Judiciary at the request of the Chief Justice
It just seems like a short period ago I had the privilege of addressing some of you Ladies
and Gentlemen and then others from the last Legislature as we talked, in a special session, about
the state cement plant, and that was brought to conclusion.
What I'd like to do today is to recognize that we live in times that are, really, unique for
South Dakota. Now it's easy to say that anytime you ever assemble or meet with people. This
is a state that demographically is really an unusual place. We're one of the largest landmasses
in America. We have 310 towns and cities. We are the most dispersed population of any state
in the Union. Our third-largest city has less than 30,000 people. Our fourth-largest city has less
than 20,000 people. We become very, very small very, very quickly in South Dakota. Yet, on
the other hand, we have to carry on all the functions that any modern society does as we try to
figure out how we develop this state and move it from here to there. And one of the most
important ways that we do it is have elections and select people that represent the men and
women, the boys and girls, the people of South Dakota.
We've come through an election last fall where every single one of you was on a ballot.
Some of you came through primary elections, you all came through a general election, some
were unopposed, but the vast majority of you had to go out and sell yourself and your ideas and
your goals and your aspirations to the people of your relative constituencies. With that behind
us now, it is incumbent on all of us to figure out how we can work together, understanding we
have our ideological differences and we have our philosophical differences, but we should not
have personal differences. That's what the people expect from all of us. There isn't a single
one of us that traversed the campaign trail that says to the public, elect me so I can stop things
from happening. Elect me so I cannot contribute to solutions to the problems. All of us tell the
public that if we are fortunate enough to earn their support and their vote, we will go out and
do their bidding and do their work.
Over the course of the next forty days, a lot of people will come to Pierre_a lot of them.
Most of them will come looking for the taxpayers' money. The vast majority of the taxpayers
out there in South Dakota, the people of South Dakota, the retired community, they don't come
to Pierre. They sent you and me to Pierre to do their bidding and to do their work. We are their
lobbyists, all of us. It is our job to lobby for them, to make sure we are true to the people who
sent us here.
One of my staff gave me this headline this morning that was in a newspaper several years
ago in South Dakota. A comment I made, no one gets left behind, it is easy to call that rhetoric,
but what we've tried to do is turn it into substance. Whether or not, ultimately, that is the case,
history will be the judge, and not in terms of how we debate in the contemporary times. What
I'd like to do today is, in a little bit of an unusual way, just take us through where we are.
We've got a full plate in South Dakota. It doesn't mean we can't get any more on it, but for a
state our size, we've got a lot of things going on that we in the executive branch and you folks
in the legislative branch, in a partnership, have really embarked upon over the last couple of
years.
It was 14 years of legislative starts ago that I first had the privilege of addressing the South
Dakota Legislature. I've got two addresses left, counting this one. During that period of time,
a lot of things have happened in South Dakota, a lot of good and some bad. But there have been
incredible changes that have taken place, and one of the most difficult things for all of us is,
How do we manage change? Because whether we like it our not, inevitably and inexorably, the
world continues to move forward and it continues to change. How do we as a people, how do
we as a people figure out how to address it?
One of the first things people will say after I talk today is, you didn't cover this, you didn't
cover this, you didn't cover this. So be it. We can't cover it all.
During the course of the next several days, we are contacting three sets of individuals to
ask if they would come to address the Legislature. I am aware that for the first week or so, there
isn't a lot of legislative calendar in the afternoons after you have convened, because the
committees are getting started and the sessions are really short until the work begins to
assemble. So, what I am going to do is, we're asking three different individuals to come before
you to make presentations that I've had the privilege of hearing, because I think it is so
important that it isn't just Bill Janklow that always gets to hear these things.
A year ago, at our request_actually it was a bill that Senator Paul Symens had introduced.
Coming out of that bill, he and I worked together and then involved other members of the
Appropriations Committee and ultimately the Legislature. We funded a study at the South
Dakota School of Mines on carbon sequestration. Carbon dioxide is the one substance that is
utilized by plants in the photosynthesis process. Given the arguments and the positions on
global warming, given what goes on with respect to dioxide in our environment, it is incredibly
important that our people understand it. More importantly, there is the potential that there could
be a huge payoff financially to South Dakota agricultural producers across the length and
breadth of this state with respect to doing the kinds of things that still make for productive
agriculture, but in such a way as to increase the utilization of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. So, we're asking Dr. Zimmerman to come from the Atmospheric Sciences Institute
at the School of Mines also to make a presentation to the Legislature.
If you go back to 1995, 62 percent of all the children in South Dakota by age two had what
was known as age-appropriate shots. Those are the shots for measles, mumps, rubella, for
whooping cough, for polio, for diphtheria, and for tetanus. Sixty-two percent of all the children
had been immunized. I can report to you today that we are the only state in the nation that has
a statewide central registry. There are over 250,000 records in that registry now that represent
over 1,200,000 shots that have been given. Today, we're at 78 percent. In a very short couple
of years, we've gained 16 percentage points in age-appropriate shots for the children below the
age of two.
As you remember, last year we asked the Legislature to fund a program that also dealt with
foundation monies from the old Blue Cross/Blue Shield, from Wal-Mart, and we put state
monies with it with a goal of immunizing every child in South Dakota in kindergarten that
hadn't had chicken pox shots and every child at the age of three months. That program is in
operation this year. What will happen is, over the next two and one-half to three years, we will
collapse it coming from both directions and every child in South Dakota will be
immunized_unless the families have religious preferences against it_will be immunized
against chicken pox. We should be able to eradicate it as a disease, which is a virus that
children get in South Dakota.
Again, we have embarked on the newborn hearing-screening program that we talked to the
Legislature about last year. After the legislative session, we went out and purchased devices for
nine hospitals that felt they couldn't afford to buy them. A year ago, 60 percent of all the
children born in this state by the age of three months had had those hearing exams. Today, I can
report to you that by July 1 of this year, 95 percent of all the children born in the State of South
Dakota will have the hearing exam by the time they are three months of age. There are about
six out of every thousand that have serious hearing impairments. When they discover them at
that age, there are phenomenal things that can be done in terms of early childhood intervention
and in terms of assisting children to get started off on the right foot in life with various types of
hearing maladies that they may have.
We asked your permission last year to start a special home visit program in Sioux Falls and
Rapid for women that I would say are truly needy_as Doneen Hollingsworth says, ladies that
have a lot of issues_in Sioux Falls and Rapid that are pregnant. We've got 130 women in that
program. They've had, at this point, the nurses, 833 visits. The average person in that program
is under 19 years of age. They are undereducated. They have no means of support. They have
no family means of support, and they have multiple issues or problems that have to be dealt
with. I can tell you that, at this point in time, we've got 19 people in that program and that 12
is up there because one of them is 12 years of age. One of them is 12 years old.
The Bright Start boxes that we passed out_this has really been a phenomenally successful program. Since last July, we've sent out_and we backed up the births to the beginning of last year_8981 Bright Start boxes. Those are the boxes that, when we get a birth registration, we mail them out to the families. In them is a CD with Mozart. It's got an Ages and Stages book.
This little book talks about what you should expect to happen at different ages and different
stages of a child's life. It's got a Goodnight Moon book to be read. It's got a videotape in it on
reading. It's a 20-minute videotape that's the best thing I've ever seen on why it is important
that you have to read to children 20 minutes a day. In fact, they say that even if you read them
the phone book, just read to them 20 minutes a day even when they are just months and weeks
old. In addition to that, there's a new health book that we're adding to it that's written at the
fourth grade level. It is for anybody to understand, listing all kinds of maladies and questions
and answers that you can turn to when you have health issues with respect to your children. In
it is a library card on how to get a library card, sign up for the monthly newsletter, a 1-800
number, and you can also, in South Dakota today, get a prescription from your doctor to get a
book. Doctors actually write prescriptions and then we give out books. It is a program between
Sioux Valley Hospital and the state together, but parents can get up to 10 books as the doctors
fill out the prescriptions for the children.
The Fetal Alcohol Syndrome that we addressed a couple of years ago has an operating
program. Again, it is on a pilot project in Sioux Falls and Rapid and we're ready to expand it.
It is a phenomenal success. That fetal alcohol program, that 47 indicates the number of adult
women who have been treated since 1997, but I'll give you one that is of greater statistical
value. Over the course of the last 12 months, there are 35 minors, under the age of 18, who have
received assistance in this program. That's why the figure 35 is up there. These are people that
are referred by the court system. They are referred by church groups. They are referred by
detox centers. They're all individuals_police officers can refer them, anybody can refer. These
are all people that have serious drinking problems, and I can tell you at this point in time,
100 percent of them that have given birth have given birth to healthy babies. None of them, and
these are all dreadful alcoholics with respect to their problems, all of them have been able to
deliver healthy babies in this program.
The parenting program that we've had going for the last couple of years is a program that really addressed three and above. This state has been very aggressive, and all of you have been very aggressive in assisting getting our laws in place. We're somewhat unique in that our laws say if you've ever been convicted of child abuse, you have to take a parenting course as part of the decision in the court system. Our laws say if you're convicted of violence, of domestic violence, you have to be sentenced, as part of your sentence, if you are adjudicated guilty, to a parenting course. One hundred percent of all people in the State of South Dakota's custody, juveniles and adults, that are not there for medical reasons or developmental disability reasons, 100 percent of them, in order to get out of our system, have to take a course in parenting.
In child protection, we're going to be submitting some legislation to the Legislature asking
to strengthen our laws with respect to taking children from their homes and putting them in
permanent settings to deal with permanent terminations in a stronger way. We have a child that
currently exists in this state that is two years old_two years old that has 17 broken bones. I
apologize. This baby is two months old, not two years old_two months old and has 17 broken
bones. You and I, all of us, have a duty to write our laws in such a way that the parents have
all the rights bestowed to them under the constitution. Our responsibility, after protecting the
parents' rights, is to figure out how we can pass laws that will make sure that, to the extent we
can, we try and reduce to zero these kinds of incidents from ever, ever being repeated on any
child.
In our after-school supervision program, which you can call out-of-school program or after-
school program, we've added 54 new programs. Actually, the communities did. We assisted
with funding, but the communities really did the work here. We added 54 new programs in 28
communities in the Year 2000_huge strides of advancement. At the present time, we've got
129 after-school programs operating in the State of South Dakota in 114 different buildings.
These are all after-school programs run under the auspices of local school areas.
Over the course of the last year and a half, we've made available in 24 different
communities, 29 different daycare centers that have been built in the Springfield prison, but all
are built to federal and state codes as they are taken and distributed throughout the state.
Now, in terms of foster care in South Dakota, this is one area where we are just embarking
on a huge new public relations effort. Actually, over the course of the last year, we've increased
by 31_we now have 562 families in South Dakota that have a child living with them that's
been placed there under foster care by the state. Some of these are kids that have been in
trouble. Some of these are kids that have been dependent or neglected. Some of these are kids
that have been abandoned. Some of these are kids that we're trying to find permanent homes
for, but they have special needs and it makes it very, very difficult. But if there is one
area_there's nothing. If there was anything we could do with legislation with this, I would
propose to do it. But any of you that have any ideas on how to significantly increase by huge
numbers the number of families that we can find that would be willing to take foster children
in South Dakota at any one of these levels or any one of these types of situations, it would be
miraculous in terms of the impact that it could have on the children.
The tobacco patches_I am asking that the Legislature authorize us, utilizing the tobacco monies, to give free patches to anybody in the State of South Dakota who is smoking and wants to quit. Now, already, since I announced that a couple of days ago, I've had some derisive comments made to me, but I will be making available to all of you that are interested, with the names deleted, some of the e-mails that I've already received from smoking parents in South Dakota and how difficult it has been for them to quit. I only really embark on this tobacco thing, recognizing that I want to do it without being a hypocrite, so I'd just like to say that publicly. No human being smoked more than I did, in more places than I did, legally and illegally, frankly, like I did. I know that, but that's what addiction will do. That's what
addiction does, and so, because I really don't like hypocrisy and none of us likes hypocrisy, I'm
not the right person to be the poster child for this kind of program given the lifestyle I've
previously had. I'm very fortunate in that medical science and prayer and a lot of effort by my
family were able to fix the problems that I had, but not everybody is as fortunate as I was and
not everybody will be as fortunate as I was. To the extent people want to quit smoking, patches
are a proven way to help some people do it, as long as they embark on other types of
programming with it. So, I'm asking that we make available to any citizen who wants
assistance in quitting smoking the utilization of the patches. Through school nurses and through
the extension service and through the nursing homes and through the various hospitals in this
state and even the various pharmacists, it would be very, very simple for us to set up very
quickly a network that would assist in the distribution of these, for all practical purposes, at very
little cost other than the cost of the bulk acquisition of these patches.
As you know, we're embarking on a diabetes program here this coming spring. We've had
a phenomenal response from every hospital in South Dakota, most of the nursing homes in
South Dakota_I just got a call from Lewis Drug yesterday saying that they wanted to be
counted in on the program_doctors' offices all over the state, public health nurses, the State
Health Department. I could just go on and on and name all the people that are becoming part
of this effort. We found in some statistics as I indicated in my budget address, we took just a
blood sample and the blood pressure of 911 state employees last fall. We discovered 325 out
of the 911, that's more than a third of them, had to have a doctor's follow-up with respect to
high blood sugar or high blood pressure or some type of cardiovascular indication. Three
hundred and twenty-five of the 900 needed to have a medical follow-up. All of them were
people who thought they were okay and they had no problems. My guess is the state labor force
is not unlike the overall mix of the State of South Dakota.
We're really going to make an effort to deal with organ donation, and we would like to
work with you people on legislation dealing with organ donation. We have individuals that
indicate they want to be organ donors and then, when the time comes and you're gone, you have
loved ones or others make a decision that they don't want to carry out the desire that you had.
We need to figure out a way to put this into a legal standing so that your wishes can be fulfilled.
Every year, a lot of South Dakotans die who wouldn't have to if there were organs available for
them. We are a net importer, if I can use the phrase that way, of organs, not an exporter. We
get far more for our people than we provide for other people. It is important because,
kidneys_we have a lady on our staff, Deb Bowman, who last summer received a kidney. She
wouldn't have lived without it. Today she is a healthy human being because she has a kidney.
I remember a friend of mine who was a state senator from Vermillion. Several years ago, his
wife received a heart transplant and she was able to live for several more years because that
transplant was made available to her. Her loved ones were able to share her and she was able
to spend a little bit more time on earth and with her loved ones. So, we're asking that we come
together and pass some legislation that facilitates those of us who want to make the decision to
donate our organs.
In terms of critical access hospitals, we have had phenomenal success. We have 17 rural hospitals, most of which would probably be closed had they not made the decision to work with the Health Department, to work with them to become what's known as critical access hospitals. By becoming critical access hospitals, they've been able to reach the point where they can now bill Medicare on a cost basis as opposed to the other way that Medicare historically has forced
them to charge. So they are able to recapture their costs in the areas where they provide their
expertise on a cost basis.
We're in the first year now of reimbursing school loans for doctors. We embarked on a
program that's truly unique. Rather than cutting tuition or loaning people money to go to school
or things like that, to med school, what we do is, for doctors who finish med school and their
other training and then go out to critically short, unmet communities that have health care needs,
if they stay there for three years, we pay for the cost of their education. We pay their loans when
they come due that they've taken out for the direct cost of their education.
We've got a real success story in Hot Springs. A year ago, we were faced with a situation
where the hospital was announcing it was going to be closed, the clinic was announcing it was
going to be closed, the nursing home was threatening to be closed, and the assisted living was
going to be closed. Today, the nursing home is open. The assisted living is open. They've got
a clinic operating in town. They've got two new doctors in the community, and they're working
to get that hospital reopened. A phenomenal success story of everybody_the state, the federal
government, the community, the city, the county, everybody_working together actually
bringing about results in these areas when you think that it is literally hopeless.
We're asking that the Legislature pass legislation this year to provide by law that all minors
have to have seatbelts on. I don't want to get in a fight about adults. They've got a right to put
their heads through a windshield, I suppose, but they don't have the right to let their kids do it.
We should pass legislation that says that everybody, not just the toddlers and the little infants,
but everybody who is a minor should be required to wear a seatbelt in this state.
In the educational arena, I just wanted to put this up very briefly to show you that back in November of '99, a year and a month ago, we had three state educators from our K-12 system on the network for e-mail. Today, we have 7793 educators on that e-mail system, the Dakota Digital Network, the DDN network that we've all created, and they have sent, just since last August, 3,065,000-plus e-mails. That averages more than 400 per teacher and we didn't even
have 7700. Last August, we only had about four or five thousand of them so, just since last
August, as it has built up, we've still had 3,000,000 e-mails that have been done by the teachers
on the Dakota Digital Network.
Let me give you another success story that just takes a moment. I mean this is something
South Dakota can be so proud of. You meet people in and out of the Legislature that say we've
done enough for technology in schools. My friends, that's like saying we've done enough in
advances in medicine. That's like saying we've done enough in advances in any area that deals
with science. We will never be done, ever be done. This is one of the most important things
that's ever happened to South Dakota. This is the great equalizer. This is where the kids from
the most remote places, and frankly the parents of the kids from the most remote places, have
access to the same information as all the other people in the world have.
In education, it's a battle this year like it's been every other year. There are people that
want to take that technology money away. Please don't take it away. What is it that's unique
about South Dakota? It is because it has been done from the state level and 100 percent funded.
It is ubiquitous. If you'll remember when we were talking back in '95 and '96 on where we
were going with technology, one of the most important points was, one of the most important
points was that we would make sure that all the kids had equal access to the same technology
in South Dakota. That has been done.
I sat on a panel just a couple of months ago in Washington, DC, testifying before Congress.
Senator Bob Kerrey from Nebraska was chairman of the commission. Dr. Gowen was a
member of the commission, the President of the School of Mines. What was unique about this?
Next to me at one point over the two and a-half hour period I was there was the Mayor of the
City of Washington, DC. Do you know what his testimony was? As Mayor, he had a mission
that he would fulfill. He was going to have a T-1 circuit in every school in Washington, DC by
the year 2004. My friends, we've had a T-1 circuit in every school building in South Dakota
except three attendance centers, in over 500 school buildings, we've had a T-1 since last
September_dealing with 28 different telephone companies, all of whom, the SDN network, the
Qwest network, phenomenal in terms of all of them coming together and what they're doing.
The DDN network is unique in all the world. There is nothing like it. There is truly nothing
like it anyplace.
Then you have the reading program that we all started last year, you and us. This program
has been so good so fast that we've asked for substantial additional monies to move it forward
on an accelerated basis. It is not fair to make some of these kids wait or some of the classroom
teachers wait to learn these skills and to put these skills to use over the course of what was
originally the three-year idea.
The technology council that I have up there. This is a group that I agreed to do last year by executive order on behalf of Representative Smidt and several other legislators whose bill
was used as a vehicle the last day of the legislative session. They lost their bill on a hoghouse,
and this was so important that I agreed to fund it. I funded it out of the Future Fund. I gave
them a grant. We brought together people from higher education, from business, and from our
communities, all of whom are involved in serious technology in one way or another. What I
charge them with, in addition to anything else they want to do, is they must look at what are we
doing or what can we do to improve geometrically the amount of involvement that our young
people have with math and science in the school systems. Dr. Gowen said at that meeting that
at the School of Mines_and I think we would all agree that's probably on the whole the most
difficult school for someone to get into in South Dakota as a public baccalaureate
institution_Dr. Gowen said that of his entering freshmen, the last two years, over half the
freshmen that were going to major in engineering were not adequately equipped to learn
effectively freshman calculus. My friends, we aren't going to get from here to there with those
kinds of statistics.
As a matter of fact, there is something even more scary. That's that next number that I've
written up on the board. We have 9200 students that graduated from our public high schools
last year, 9200. Seven thousand five hundred and sixty-two took the ACT test and only 241 of
those who took the ACT test had taken Algebra 1, Algebra 2, geometry, trigonometry, and
calculus in high school. Now, I'm going to say that again, because that statistic tells us that
we've got far bigger problems than we ever dreamt if it is true. Of the 7500 students that took
the ACT, only 240 of those had taken two years of algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and
calculus.
Every one of us gets asked by our constituents all the time, When are the high-tech jobs
coming to South Dakota? When are the big paying jobs coming to South Dakota? When are
the opportunities coming to South Dakota for the $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000_we read
all the time about all these high-paying jobs elsewhere in the tens of thousands a year. My
friends, they will come when we have a labor force that can learn the skills. That's when they'll
come. So, I just put that statistic up because I don't have an answer to this, because every
community you talk to says they're doing just fine. Everybody is doing just fine, but that is the
cumulative number of all of us who are doing just fine.
There's another demographic nightmare out there, and Dr. Satterlee can talk about this far
more eloquently than I can. Actually, I had him check last week. I asked him, because it is
important that we know where we are. We've got 49 school districts in South Dakota that in
the last five years have grown by 3204 students. That brings on pressures. We've got 124
school districts that have lost 9544 kids in the last five years. That's incredible, and it is going
to accelerate. It is going to accelerate because, as those numbers continue to go down, less and
less young people stay there and start their families, which means there are less and less kids in
the future. So, this is something that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in most places, but it
is going to fall off the charts demographically. It actually accelerates itself very quickly. The
point that I'm making is we have to formulate our public policies to address this. That's what
we have to do, all of us.
None of us has the answers to all these problems. Collectively, we've got to come up with our best judgments to try and deal with it. I can tell you, my friends, that's why we can't mess with what we're doing in technology. That's why DDN is so important. That's why, whether people will admit it or not today, you're going to see an explosion over the next several years
of school teachers in different classrooms teaching to many school districts at the same time
over and over throughout the day. We're asking for legislation to be passed that mandates when
teachers teach for more than one school district, they will be compensated accordingly and not
just by some set schedule on how many credit hours they have in college and how many years
they've taught. There has to be recognition financially for those people that are taking on this
far greater effort and developing those far greater skills, and not all of us are capable of doing
it. Some of us are. Some of us aren't.
I'm going to elaborate just a little bit on the scholarships and teen smoking, if you'd put
that chart up.
At a Regents' Forum that we had in Sioux Falls recently that I was asked to attend a week
ago, several legislators were there and a bunch of business people from throughout the state, and
the Regents gave a report on what I'll call the Regents' progress for the last year, the public
report, they called it. After the luncheon, Harvey Jewett and I spoke, and then we answered
questions. At one point, I pointed to Jim Abbott, the President of the University of South
Dakota, and I said, Jim, if you've got a person in their freshman year that gets a 2.5_and when
I went to school, 2.5 was C-plus, it was okay_if you've got a person that gets a 2.5 their first
year and then gets a 4.0 their sophomore, junior, and senior years, all A's from then on, can they
get into med school? He said, probably not. Well if that's true, if that's true, then the kids that
come out of high school that go to college have to be prepared to be better than 2.5 students if
they want to be doctors.
I'm not saying all of us can do that. A lot of us can't, but can you imagine how any of us would really feel if we know anything we ever did prevented a kid who could have done that from doing it because we didn't equip them and prepare them? Do you know how much time we spend getting the team ready for basketball? Do you know how much time and effort they spend getting the team ready for football, how much time and effort we spend getting people
ready for track? We've got to put the same kind of effort into reading, writing, and arithmetic.
If we do, South Dakota's going to blossom like nothing any of us have ever seen, because that's
where the real payoff is. Long after the letter sweaters are put away, we'll still be getting the
payoff from what we were able to achieve academically.
It creates graduates with knowledge and skills for higher paying jobs. It encourages
schools to focus on academic substance, and the bottom line is, we build the intellectual base
of the State of South Dakota.
two years of algebra, geometry,
I'd just like to report to you these are the communities where what they call the Governor's Houses built in Springfield have gone as of January 1. You can see they have gone the length and breadth of South Dakota. These don't represent homes, they represent communities where the 617 homes have been delivered to the 190 communities. As you can see in the red, those are where we built the daycare centers, 29 daycare centers that have gone into the 24 different communities throughout the state. I just wanted to give you a quick report on how that program is coming. It has been somewhat controversial, because there are some people that don't like it, but it has fulfilled a very unique need and a very desperate need in this state for