Yap on, Yap off . .

I have a route that I run/walk every two or three days in Oneonta. I park the Prius at the Lester Memorial United Methodist Church parking lot (3rd Avenue and 1st Street, join us Sunday for worship at 8:30 and 11:00 a.m.). From there it's an good steady climb about halfway up Shuff's mountain, then down and back around 4th Avenue. The lap is about 1.4 miles, which I do three times.

I pass many houses with dogs. Some are big and goofy and slobber on my legs as I try to get by them. A couple want to trot along for awhile till they get bored or realize that humans apparently jog along for no good reason, no squirrel or cat involved, so what's the point. I sometimes wonder myself.

But then there are these little yappy dogs. In the past six weeks I have passed their house about 48 times. Each time I pass it is as if they have never seen nor smelled me before. Their little pointy ears perk straight up as they lift their heads, stretching their necks, eyes bugging out, every sinew taut, and then they spring into action with everything they have, which is mostly a high pitched yapping, but also includes running at a full sprint until they get within a couple of feet of my ankles, at which time they stop, let me get a little ahead, and yap at a safe distance until I am up the hill a ways. After I am clear they prance home with with a look of satisfaction on their yappy little faces that they have once again repelled the intruder. They did it the first time I passed, and they still do it. The rest of the dogs in the neighborhood don't even look up anymore.

I have a good friend who lives next to a yappy dog. I have discouraged her from offing it under the cover of darkness. So you see I have nothing against them. They are what they are.

But they remind me of some of our public officials' approach to public policy and solutions to our problems.

We have problems in Alabama. We cannot pay for what we need. We cannot even decide what we need, or at least it seems like the ones we have hired to do that job cannot decide. They just yap for awhile until the public tires of watching and then prance pridefully back to wherever they came from to rest.

Take for instance education. Section 256 of the Alabama Constitution declares it to be the policy of the state of Alabama to foster and promote the education of its citizens in a manner and consistent with its available resources. (It then goes on to make sure that the only right that the Alabama constitution assures regarding education is the right to send your child to a school with children of your own race, but that's a different story that hopefully will soon come to an end with the act of the legislature and the vote of the people).

It is the constitutionally declared policy of the State of Alabama to foster and promote the education of its citizens.

I may be naive, but this seems simpler than we make it. We know approximately how many students we will have in primary and secondary schools. We can make decisions on how much space per student and how many students per teacher we think would be best. We could determine where new schools must be built, where some should be expanded and remodeled, and where some should be closed. The costs could be estimated with acceptable accuracy. And then we pay for it.

But we never do that. The legislature is beating their chests this term for reforming the teacher tenure law in Alabama. It probably needed reforming. I'll leave the discussion of whether this is reform or not for another day. I may have to find a guest writer for that one.

But it does painfully little to address the issues of primary and secondary education in the State of Alabama.

It is a lot of yapping about very, very little.

But it is enough to get them by until the next lap.

(Please comment if you have any thoughts about solutions. Or tell me why we can't address our real problems. Not just in education. I'll forward them on to the other Robert Bentley).