WHY WE SERVE

June 6th, 2003

“Except for the honor,” Nathan Hale is alleged to have said before he was hanged, “I just as soon pass.”

It is, of course, an honor to serve on the school board. The trust of one’s fellow citizens to render a public service is a source of pride. But at 75, with all the aches and pains that flesh is heir to, the hanging part might well be avoided. And, to paraphrase the Bible, pride goeth before the fall.

Service on the school board, if it is to be done conscientiously, is hard work. It is not merely a matter of sitting at meetings and voting one way or the other, although heaven knows there are enough meetings. It requires an infinite amount of preparatory work. You need to familiarize yourself with all kinds of issues and options, from taxation, to construction, to education, to personnel, to legislation, to real estate and so on. The amount of information pouring over the transom is endless, and then there is the information that you have to seek out for yourself. The public rightly holds you responsible for whatever happens in the district, although often what happens is unknown to you despite your best efforts to stay informed.

Various friends ask, why bother? Why spend all that time and efforts, why suffer the slings and arrows of outraged (if mis or uninformed) constituents, and why be depressed over the results of the election? Why should you care? You have no children or grandchildren in the schools. And you are not even out there defending your pocket book. Why vote for expensive renovations and additions to the buildings when your income is severely limited, you have no pension, and you lost your reserves in the market collapse? After all, those taxes hurt you.

The answer is a passionate belief that the future of our nation, indeed our civilization, depends upon our educating our children superbly for the challenges that lay ahead. I, we, owe it to the country that has nurtured us to preserve our democracy as a beacon to the world. This is not mere patriotism. If we do not succeed, we leave to our descendants a country that will no longer be the kind of country we have enjoyed. We will leave them a dictatorship and economic ruin.

Democracy without a public that is literate and has the analytical tools necessary to understand public issues is simply not possible. Survival in our high tech world against the competition of cheap labor and the better educated populace of our economic rivals is equally not possible. We have to sharply reverse the trend to dumbing down American education. There is no higher priority in our society. Required, therefor, are board members who truly strive to make real the District’s Mission Statement, “Demanding excellence for student success.”.

A passionate belief in the need for education does not mean that I or other board members have not made mistakes. Our responsibilities are very large and it is darn near impossible to stay on top of every issue that arises. All I can say is that I, and indeed we, have done are best to provide a superb education to the children of our community. Can it be better? Certainly. And left to our own devices we would have made it better.

This is not to say that we are above criticism or that we have the answers to all of the problems. But I listened as hard as I could to the candidates who succeeded in the primary and heard not one constructive idea that would either enhance education or save taxes. I say this with regret because they may be my future colleagues.

What I have heard, aside from the usual throw-the-bums-out campaign, is that we do not communicate well. There is some merit in that, although communication is very hard when meeting after meeting new people pop up who have not heard the explanation for something or other or who have just discovered Seven Up. Rational explanations by board members are sometimes taken as arrogance. Board members should not have to apologize for being intelligent or rational so long as they don’t patronize those with different viewpoints. That has sometimes happened, but in my observation very rarely.

To make the board more user friendly, the board will discuss at the committee meeting scheduled for the 9th, a plan to permit public comment on motions before the board at business meetings. Under the present procedure, the public is invited to participate freely when a proposition is discussed at a board committee meeting before the committee reaches a consensus that action should be taken at a business meeting. For example, the board might consider at a meeting of the Education Committee—that is, the board sitting as a committee of the whole and chaired by the Education Committee Chairman Linda Krentz ---some matter of education policy. Dr. Krentz would certainly entertain questions and comments on the policy during the discussion. However, when the proposition is actually voted on at the business meeting, under the present procedure public comment is allowed only at the beginning of the meeting on agenda items only and not during the board debate on whether or not to pass the particular resolution.