I hate peeing in the cheerios, here, but this is pretty meaningless when we have the New Freedom Commission recomendations coupled with a federal bureaucracy like SAMSHA to implement those recommendations. This won't be mandatory, at first. Nothing will change except the funding in 2006, 2007, and on, and SAMSHA will grow in power. In ten years no one will remember the word "mandatory" just as parents now are forgetting the state cannot "force" their children on drugs. They can make life hell for you and intensely pressure if you refuse, but they can't force anything.
IF anything a power vacuum is created here and guess who gets to fill it? The best thing would be for the feds to get OUT of the schools altogether, but that will never happen. Once a federal program is enacted, no matter how small at first, it takes on a life of its own and becomes immortal.
JMO. I do applaud the CCHR for their efforts, though. And I hope to hell I am wrong.
...talk about an Orwellian name!!
(I don't think Orwell himself could have dreamt it up for such a commission)