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The Cleburne Independent School District recently ran an election for two places on its Board of Trustees. There were two candidates for each place. Each candidate had his own motivation for running. I was motivated to avoid candidacy altogether for the following reasons: Being a School Board member is a thankless , not to mention unpaid, job. I could change part of that if only I could remember to pick up a box of thank-you cards. School Board members have to deal with voters. One of the candidates in the CISD School Board election advocated name-calling (specifically "dumb ass") as an effective teaching method. This candidate did not win, but hundreds of voters voted for him. The School Board members now have the difficult, masochistic, and dangerous task of ascertaining which of these voters were the dumb ass determiners and which were the dumb asses. |
Being involved in education is scary. In answering a question regarding his stand on uniforms in public schools, one of the School Board candidates stated, "I don't want to be like Japan. All their kids wear the same outfit, and it's scary to look at it. We beat them in World War II, and I don't want to have to put up with that stuff again." This candidate did not win the election, but he teaches history and coached football. To me, large lines of weight-trained immigrant descendants in padded uniforms and helmets are much scarier than school children in matching clothes. Maybe even scarier than both is a history teacher who doesn't know about Occupied Japan, the demise of the Empire, and the educational options in modern Japan. School Board Trustees are considered the cure to what could have been prevented. No one seems to care about education until an offspring gets in trouble or taxes go up. Often, shortly after that is when the School Board is asked (nay, commanded) to act in capacities far outside their realm. |