It took 3 years but I successfully bullied my best friend into regular attendance at her school board meetings. She has 2 kids still in the district and I'm sorry but this is really the basement in terms of expectations of participation.
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Agree it’s important, but I can’t physically/mentally/emotionally handle any more things in addition to working and parenting. I’d also prefer to be on the tree preservation council if I wasn’t so wrung out.
as someone who worked for a school, i cannot understate how important this for EVERYONE. they do not care about staff, they do not care about students, they care about parents, "taxpayers" and a bad reputation. even just showing up and nothing else is SO powerful
Not the same thing but there was a link sent out today asking for concerns about the school from your perspective your kids etc & then a second link sent out for a space to write out concerns in more detail. Easy to skip but I filled it out. It’s important these admins and boards hear from us
All politics are local, and the basement in particular is probably the most important place to start. You did well by your friend and she'll be glad you did that.
She took the first step ❤️—it’s amazing how sparsely attended our Board of Ed meetings are here.,But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It took me years to finally commit to attending every month. Inertia, and that thing of being in the house with the phone all the time.
I love "successfully bullied." Often my descriptor for something along those lines, where I'm being annoying in order to make someone I know do a thing, is "emotionally blackmailed." Always with love though!
I know that folks with children who also have jobs outside the home are barely holding it together most days. AND I really think that school boards and your kid's education are really critical so... go to those meetings if you can. [that has been my multi-year pitch and it worked finally, lol]
No doubt! I've been to several in the last year-and-a-half, but ideally would get to more. We put up a pretty good fight over their removal of a novel about life in Palestine from the middle school curriculum but ultimately failed to get anywhere on it. We had like 12 people but needed more. 1/2
It was a frustrating but I guess educational experience, and we know a bit more about how to fight the board/superintendent going forward (I think, tangentially, it helped us recently be able to do a KYR in our kids' school). Here's a story describing what happened.
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https://newarkermag.com/2024/05/01/the-curious-removal-of-a-book/