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thedrifter
04-29-07, 08:37 AM
Get back to reading, writing, arithmetic


Greg Pasco is a father of four, a teacher, a Vietnam veteran and a former IRS agent accustomed to watching government dollars.

He thinks his background would make him a good addition to the Sioux Falls School Board.

Pasco, 58, thinks schools spend too much on what goes on outside class. Inside class, "we have to go back and re-emphasize the basics in reading, writing, arithmetic and logic," he said.

Pasco, whose father worked for Chrysler, missed five months of second grade with measles, mumps, chicken pox and scarlet fever. Recuperating at home, he read so many books that when he returned to school, he did more than catch up. "I had no problem passing. They went ahead and skipped me a grade, too," he said.

He left college for the Marines, which put him in Vietnam most of 1969. He then was pulled from the hostilities and sent to Okinawa for a year because a unit there needed a bookkeeper. He had no explanation for that change of fortune then or now except that "the Lord looks out for people."

After the war, he became an investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, a career that taught him the insides of a giant bureaucracy. In light of that, he thinks the school budget needs a fresh exam, that overhead is too high and the district needs more teachers.

He and his wife began home-schooling their children when the family lived in New Mexico. That was to save a long commute and also because their children did well at home. "Home-schooling is not the perfect solution for everyone," he said. "You have to have the desire and confidence and put forth the effort, but I do believe in it."

He also believes in what goes on in classrooms.

"I teach at Colorado Tech," he said. "It's not that I'm opposed to education in a formal setting. The two could learn from each other."

[liPublished]: April 29. 2007 1:55AM

Ellie