Ken King holds Town Hall
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CHILDRESS – Only 12 people showed up to State Rep. Ken King’s Town Hall on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at Childress Regional Medical Center (CRMC), but it created an intimate and engaging discussion.
This also enabled me the opportunity to talk to him one on one.
“When I first got elected, Senator Seliger told me, ‘you need to make your counties twice a year, every one of them, no matter how big your district is’,” said King, who was also in Childress at the Chamber banquet in January.
King said it’s important he goes to events like the Chamber banquet and to hold town halls, because he’s the last rural representative in Texas. “There’s 181 elected officials, and I have the only rural District House or Senate, meaning I don’t touch a population center of a 100,000,” he explained.
When I told him I liked how he answered my questions, he said, “I don’t know how to be a politician. I know how to be a statesman. I know how to care about Texas and our part of Texas.”
During the town hall, he gave an update on the 88th legislative session and the important things that happened, including benefits for community colleges, such as Clarendon College.
“Community colleges got a huge bump out of this big old budget, and it was time,” King said. “In fact, we put about $600 million into the community college system. It was the right thing to do, and I was proud of that. That bill was one of the greatest wins of the 88th legislative session.”
CRMC CEO Holly Holcomb thanked Rep. King. She shared how 50% of CRMC’s nursing staff are Clarendon College Program graduates.
“Without Clarendon College, we would not be able to staff our ER, our med surg (medical/surgical) floor, our clinic, our prison health clinic, our dialysis clinic, home health or hospice,” Holcomb said.
King also talked about the teacher shortage. “West Texas A&M University (WT) is our teacher college,” he said. “That’s where our certified classroom teachers largely come from.”
The 26 counties in the Texas Panhandle had a need of 600 certified classroom teachers last year, he shared. “WT graduated 55,” King said. “We have a national teacher shortage. This is a crisis.”
He said money is not the issue. “Number one reason they (teachers) don’t stay is classroom discipline,” King said. “The number two reason why teachers don’t stay in their profession is their retirement, and I think we took a giant step in taking care of that this time.”
Education and vouchers was another topic King touched on.
“Everything that was coming down the pipe for your small school was getting determined by places like Houston,” he said. “I’ve stayed on the public ed committee by choice. It is a thankless job sometimes, but it’s a necessary job.”
The public ed budget is always going to be 75 – 80% of the budget, because it’s a constitutional spend, King explained. “If we’re going to spend that much of your money somewhere, I think it’s a good place for your rep to be, because one of my first duties is to be a custodian of your tax dollars.”
King explained how classrooms got $8.9 billion, but those were funds that were already pledged from previous sessions.
“We didn’t put $1 in classrooms,” he said. “Not one teacher got a pay raise. Why did that happen? Because I wouldn’t vote for a voucher.”
King said the voucher plans had no benefit for House District 88, because there is only one accredited and ADA private school in his 19 counties, and it’s in Plainview. He said a lot of homeschool proponents told him they wanted their $10,000. “Homeschoolers weren’t going to benefit,” he said.
But King said a Muslim school in Dallas teaching Sharia law can get the money. “Let’s think about the border for minute,” he said. “We’re going to send the illegals to private school while we’re defunding your schools. I can’t vote for that.”
He said the No. 1 issue is border security. King also spoke about mental health.
“We have a mental health crisis,” he said. “We have a fentanyl crisis. We have a homeless crisis – just drugs, drugs, drugs. When people get on fentanyl, they become indigent almost immediately.”
He said money won’t fix this.
“We have a cultural problem in this nation,” King explained. “We were just talking about when you take God out of your culture, this is what you get. Money won’t fix all this, but one of the things we did do as a legislature, we used your dollars to fund mental health facilities.”
