Here's the rest of the story.
Also speaking against parental board membership was Carolyn Sharette, director of the American Preparatory Academy, a publicly funded charter school in Draper. One of Sharette's board members is her brother, Howard Headlee, president of the Utah Bankers Association and former assistant to Stephenson at the Utah Taxpayers Association.
Sharette has proposed to the Utah Charter School State Board that she add a satellite school at another location. In other words, she wants to franchise her charter school business.
She has more control to make such decisions with an appointed board, rather than a board with independently elected parents.
No fair: Also at Tuesday's meeting, legislators who balked at the idea of parental involvement in charter schools lamented the lack of parental involvement in policies of the Utah High School Activities Association during a discussion before the charter school debate.
Those pro-charter legislators complained that parents don't have more say in the UHSAA's rules concerning high school athletes and that the association has a hypocritical policy about athletes' participation in schools that are outside the student's school boundary.
Religious private schools can recruit athletes from virtually anywhere, they argued, while charter schools, which don't have boundaries, cannot recruit athletes.
That's actually a good point, but it's interesting to note when legislators think parents have a right to be involved and when they think they don't.
People helping people: You might recall my story last week about the plight of Terrell Liljenquist. His electronic wheelchair broke down in the middle of an intersection and cars drove around him with nobody stopping to help until a member of the Disabled Rights Action Committee and an off-duty West Valley City Police officer came to his aid.
That spawned an e-mail from Tom Schafer who was driving eastbound on 400 South recently when he noticed a man with no legs lose control of his electric-powered wheelchair on the TRAX platform at 600 East and fall onto the tracks.
Schafer stopped his car and joined three pedestrians in rescuing the man and pulling his wheelchair back onto the platform.
But just like the incident with Liljenquist, most drivers who witnessed the potential tragedy just kept driving merrily on their way.
Schafer suggests it might be a good idea to put a railing along the platform at TRAX stations.
prolly@ sltrib.com
