A lot of people use school boards as jumping off points to political careers. A friend of mine served on her son's school board and she said when it was no longer about the kids, she was gone. During her tenure there was a major building project they oversaw, so attention was focused for a time, but afterwards, the petty crap started in and that was when she resigned. She said some people have truly altruistic intentions but others...it is a prime example of narcissistic behavior at everyone else's expense.
This is what you happen when you take mediocre people living mediocre lives and give them a hint of power. Instead, what we need is for excellent people with excellent lives to sacrifice part of their productive day to help the community with the school board. Being part of the school board should be a sacrifice you make from your own life to help the community, instead of it becoming your entire life or your greatest accomplishment.
Ever notice how determined these school boards are to kick off the multi-million $$$ new school building projects? Growing up, a couple of my schools were renovated or simply expanded.
Now they buy swaths of land (spending our tax $ ASAP or take out 30 year bonds) and build 50 acre campuses approaching $20 MM.
Strange how those big bronze plaques at the entrance have similar names to the contractors that built the place.
My town did this very thing. They haven’t even paid off the new middle school they built 10+ years ago and aren’t even taking proper care of it anymore. Then they built an $83 million high school with baseball diamonds, tennis courts, etc even though they could just use the local parks for that. To top it off, my town is not very big at all.. and they’ve hiked up property taxes because of the big waste of money in this huge high school.
A lot of people use school boards as jumping off points to political careers. A friend of mine served on her son's school board and she said when it was no longer about the kids, she was gone. During her tenure there was a major building project they oversaw, so attention was focused for a time, but afterwards, the petty crap started in and that was when she resigned. She said some people have truly altruistic intentions but others...it is a prime example of narcissistic behavior at everyone else's expense.
This is what you happen when you take mediocre people living mediocre lives and give them a hint of power. Instead, what we need is for excellent people with excellent lives to sacrifice part of their productive day to help the community with the school board. Being part of the school board should be a sacrifice you make from your own life to help the community, instead of it becoming your entire life or your greatest accomplishment.
I've said for years, the people that would be good at the job, for the job, don't want anything to do with it.
Very well said.
Ever notice how determined these school boards are to kick off the multi-million $$$ new school building projects? Growing up, a couple of my schools were renovated or simply expanded.
Now they buy swaths of land (spending our tax $ ASAP or take out 30 year bonds) and build 50 acre campuses approaching $20 MM.
Strange how those big bronze plaques at the entrance have similar names to the contractors that built the place.
Hmmmm???
My town did this very thing. They haven’t even paid off the new middle school they built 10+ years ago and aren’t even taking proper care of it anymore. Then they built an $83 million high school with baseball diamonds, tennis courts, etc even though they could just use the local parks for that. To top it off, my town is not very big at all.. and they’ve hiked up property taxes because of the big waste of money in this huge high school.
Not a big waste to them, they get all the kickbacks from the contracts, they love it.