Plano Independent School District is taking taxpayers for a ride with a decked-out Winnebago. Administrators are calling it a mobile "how to be a better parent" classroom. For the rest of us, it is emblematic of the wasteful spending and mission distraction so common in public education.

According to the Dallas Morning News, the $300,000 customized Winnebago is equipped with a dozen computers.

And demonstrating the subtle racism and class-ism which exudes from Plano ISD and public ed bureaucracies in general; the program -- again, how to be a better parent -- is "designed for low-income and non-English-speaking parents."

Because, they seem to imply, poor people who don't speak English are automatically bad parents and can only be educated in a Winnebago stuffed with computer equipment.

Just how pervasive is the frivolous spending? Check out the title of the bureaucrat charged with promoting the Winnebago tour of Plano: executive director of student and family services.

Whatever happened to Algebra teachers and principals?

Never fear: an "education professor" at the University of North Texas has given the project the green-light. In stating the obvious, this professor told the Morning News: "There's a lot of research to support that the more involved parents are in their children learning, the children do better in school."

How much the taxpayers spent on that "research" is probably best left unknown.

Wonder if the next research project by this professor will show that the printed word is critical to the process of reading?

Right now the "mobile classroom" is being funded with federal stimulus dollars. That lasts just two years. Bureaucrats say the Winnebago tax-machine will have to prove itself to continue.

But when was the last time a nonsensical, expensive program championed by the bureaucracy was cut?