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of an already existing holiday as Martin Luther King Day but added that it would depend on the holiday proposed for the shared arrangement.
Education
As a vocational agriculture teacher for 17 years in the Page County school system, Catron has had first hand experience with the impact of state mandated Standards of Quality.
“Unless they’re state funded, I wouldn’t support keeping them. Some of the SOQ requirements definitely need to be rewritten,” he maintained.
Particularly in small rural school systems, expensive regulations don’t always bring about a higher quality of education, he said. "What’s happening is that the average child is being shortchanged,” he claimed.
To cut down on the costs of education mandates, he proposes allowing sm&ll school systems to consolidate special education programs rather than requiring separate classes for just a few children classified as emotionally disturbed, mentally retarded or learning disabled.
Catron also suggested easing Title 9 requirements which call for equal athletic programs for males and females. "We should give localities an opportunity to be responsible, to act responsibly in filling school needs . . . We could try it for a while. If it doesn’t work, we may have to go back to the mandates, again,” he said.
The Page County supervisor advocates keeping Virginia's “Dillon Rule” which retains for the state those powers not specifically delegated to local government.
"But I think we should give localities more power, especially in land use ... In the future, we need to look closely at allowing purchase of development rights as a tool for preserving agricultural land . . . Zoning has helped but it hasn't been too successful in most places,’'he*Mnd:-> ’
Allowing purchase of development rights would be “a way of giving young people a method of obtaining financing to start a farming operation,” Catron maintained.
He opposes any attempts to ban or regulate uranium mining at the state level, an issue that has surfaced in the
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