I've never went to a school board meeting before, but I really wanted to have a question answered so I decided to go. A few weeks ago I was told by a school employee that a project, a remodel of a intermediate school, was $20M over budget. $20M overbudget for a school remodel?? That's why I went. I arrived at 5:30pm, the board meeting was called into session and I was promptly escorted out of the auditorium because there was an executive session and the public wasn't invited. Oh well. I met a lady in the cafeteria and we began to chat. She has three kids in this school district. At 6:30pm we were invited back into the auditorium and the meeting continued. Lots of agenda items, some perked my ears up, some were hohum. A school employee named Steve, I later found out he was the grand poobah of the physical building guru(sorry I don't know his title), stood up and proceeded to explain how the remodel of the intermediate school was progressing. $15M has been spent as to date with a total cost over run of about a million. He explained in detail on why the overruns happened and I fully understood what he was saying.
The meeting lasted about two hours but what really frightened me was the lack of people in the audience. Only myself and the lady with three kids were present. That's it. A school district with about 2000 kids and probably 10K+ residents and only TWO people show up for a school board meeting.
Is this common for other parts of America? If so then I completely understand why our schools are turning out dolts. No parental oversight of the board members. No input. No nothing to keep the school board on a path which most parents want. I plan on seeing the Superintendent of the school system and the guy named Steve. Pick their minds and express my wishes on how to make the school a better place for the kids. Somehow the board wants to spend large quantites of money on buildings but the average percentile this school system has, compared with the entire state, is around 37% for reading comprehension and 43% for Math. Something is not quite right in this district. Maybe I'll figure it out.
If you have suggestions on how to raise the percentile rates please let me know.
Public participation is abysmal. I think this is because we have been demoralized and convinced that there is no point in participating, but also because we have been distracted by items of self gratification and in many cases distracted because just survival is taking our full attention.
Please do get involved. Join a parent council. Run to be a trustee on the school board.
None of this gets better until we stop shirking our responsibilities and start getting involved. Evil has done what it has done because good people abandoned the field and let them have their way.
Can you elaborate on this? I am just curious on what self-gratification items are really distracting the public and what items of survival is also distracting us. Just trying to help brainstorm a solution.
The demoralization is plain to see. Ask people if their vote makes any difference. Ask if they think any of the candidates are worthy of their support. Then ask that fuckin slacker what they have been doing to be involved in our political processes.
What I have found is that people think their vote is meaningless, all the candidates are useless/controlled/corrupt and they have almost no participation in the political process other than to bitch and complain while blissfully ignorant of how any of it works or what role they as a citizen play.
The demoralization is complete and effective. People who are supposed to be the check and balance are asleep at the switch and failing to fulfill their role all the while complaining that someone else is to blame.
Because the electorate is demoralized, our enemies are able to easily elect candidates that are going to subvert the foundations of our society.