To the editor:

As the presidential candidates prepare for the 2008 election, I will be preparing my credentials for a teaching job in the state of Kansas. I will be spending the next year completing the prescribed requirements, putting together my resume, references, getting my physical including a flu shot and TB tests, taking standardized tests in subject content and teaching techniques, putting together a portfolio and a credential file and submitting online applications to each school district which duplicate the whole process. After I am scrutinized and interviewed, I hope I am deemed worthy to teach music to elementary school students. It’s taken me a good five years.

Now, I want to see the credentials of the potential presidential candidates. I don’t want to rely on their election machines and spin doctors. I want to see their resumes, their college transcripts, their letters of reference. I want to see that the doctor gives them the good bill of health. I want to call their references and interview them. I want the raised seals, the notarization and the certified paperwork.

After the last fiasco, presidential candidates should have to prove they are intelligent, healthy and qualified to lead our nation by providing the people, the electors, with the same hard data we demand of our teachers.

Megan Helm,

Lawrence