I enthusiastically endorse Travis Manning for Idaho House seat, District 10, the district I live in with my wife Carrie and three children, Mara, Molly, and Eliot. I support Travis for three reasons – his character, his positions, and his motives.
I have known Travis Manning for almost 10 years. He is a friend, a neighbor, and also attends church with my family. His family is of high character. He is an others-oriented person who spends hours every week in volunteer service with the Boy Scouts and youth groups. He teaches locally and has coached and mentored many of our youth. When he and his wife Ann began the process of adopting a child from China, they asked me to write a character reference. I wrote the letter without hesitation. He is a model citizen worthy of admiration.
As a public teacher and educator, Travis Manning understands the need for education reform in Idaho. He also understands that not every reform proposal is equally worthwhile. Idaho needs research-based, data-driven reform initiatives drawn from best practices in the industry, not unproven experiments forced through the legislature by headstrong state-level mavericks. Mr. Manning is not a radical maverick but a thoughtful educator who promotes education reform strategies that emphasize increasing parental involvement, enhancing student-teacher interaction, and valuing teachers for the professionals they are. His strategies for education reform will never exclude, demoralize, and demonize Idaho’s teaching corps, students, and hard-working families.
Travis Manning promotes technology use in the classroom, but not as a replacement for human instruction, empathy, and emotion. Idaho’s rising generation (including my own children who attend Caldwell schools) need more leaders like Travis Manning. As a Representative in the House, he will demand reasonable education reform even as funding pressures continue. I have no doubt that his policy strategies will improve classroom learning, graduation rates, and college attendance rates.
Travis Manning’s motives to serve in Idaho’s House of Representatives are not colored by personal ambition. Anybody who knows Mr. Manning would never describe him as politically ambitious, slick, or shallow. Too many career politicians dominate the political life of our democracy, even in Idaho. As a true citizen-servant, Travis Manning will represent well the interests of Caldwell’s 10th District residents, guided by public spiritedness, not personal ambition. I can’t imagine a person I would rather have representing my family and community in the Idaho Legislature.
Dr. Robert Dayley
The College of Idaho
Carnegie Foundation
2011 Idaho Professor of the Year
Caldwell Resident
rdayley@collegeofidaho.edu
