Last week in talking about the bill to move local elections to the fall, Sen. Holmes objected that he was only hearing from organized groups and claimed John Q. Public supported the bill despite overwhelming opposition from municipalities, school boards, PTA, Game On and others. At the same time, legislators, including Rep. Hawkins referenced in the linked article, expressed irritation at being contacted by high school students about the bill to criminalize the teaching of material deemed by some to be “harmful to minors”. We believe legislators need to be more open to what qualifies as hearing from constituents. Keep it up, Kansans.

“’They went about it in a really nice process and allowed us to be educated fully, but we were still a little bit shocked about how much backlash there was to this,’ said student Monica Ochoa.
“’The overall tone of the discussion, especially with the state representative [Rep. Hawkins], seemed to be almost annoyed at what we did,’ said student Andrew Figueiredo.

Read more here: http://ksn.com/2015/03/02/east-high-student-protest-prompts-meeting-with-lawmaker/