Vote for Me!

By Steven

July 14 -- Cue up the old Alice Cooper song. I want to be elected.

That’s right, elected. And not just to any old political office. I want to become a member of one of the most powerful --  yet overlooked -- offices in the United States today: the local school board.

For the past several years, I’ve been producing the Web sites for the parent-teacher groups at two schools in my hometown. I get to talk to a lot of parents, teachers and administrators, and I read entirely too much paperwork. What started as bemusement with what I saw happening (or not happening) in the school district became a running gag about ‘how I’d fix things when I was elected.’ In the past few weeks, though, that joke has become a quest to actually get elected.

Now, I can’t think of another office that draws as much enmity as the school board. Teachers want more money, principals want more staff, administrators want more programs and students want more play time. In the smaller category, parents want smaller classes (which means more teachers) and taxpayers want a smaller bill.

Try doing all that.

Like many things in my life lately, the metamorphosis from a running gag to reality began in the diner down in the village. One morning, I was perusing the classifieds while mindlessly refereeing an argument between two friends regarding the negotiations on the latest teachers’ contract, which was branching out to touch on many aspects of the school system. Admittedly, the contract negotiations that time around were a joke, and the school budget was seriously out of whack, giving everybody ammunition for whatever viewpoint they had.

“Well,” I said. “I’m going to run for school board and I’ll do my best to fix all these problems. Fire a few teachers, cut a few programs, lay off some administrators, we’ll get things back in shape.”

I expected to get a rise out of everybody. Instead, people on all sides of the issues started congratulating me and offering help and advice. It was scary.

Later that day, I ran into a town councilman who’s married to one of the teachers’ union negotiators. While discussing some crisis bedeviling the town – parking around the library and middle school or some such pressing issue — I mentioned that I was considering a run for the school board. Imagine my surprise when he recommended I do it, and made some campaign suggestions on the spot.

Ditto the next few groups of politically savvy people I talked with. So I got to thinking, why not run? After all, the school board sucks up 60 percent of the tax dollars in town, the board approved the latest budget with little clue to what it contained and the school system is in serious disarray. Besides, nobody pays attention to the elections. (The loser in the last campaign didn't campaign, didn't debate, didn't visit the local newspaper or fill out its questionnaire and pulled his kids out of public school. He lost by a mere 200 votes.)

What the heck. I can juggle multimillion dollar newsroom system installations, train hundreds of reporters and editors on new technology and new methodology, edit stories and photos, write headlines, write stories, organize – week after week – a Sunday newspaper and track a complex, highly zoned daily newspaper through its production cycle (nine news zones, 19 advertising zones, complete remake of Page One and its jumps, Metro One and its jumps, the World/National pages – eight times a night – and change the page count between first and second edition) and still meet deadlines (every 15 minutes). Working on a school board ought to be a snap.

Yes, there are differences. If not a God, I was at least a demi-god at my last several jobs. A school board member is one voice among nine, each with one vote. If I couldn’t fire someone before, I had the journalistic equivalent of Purgatory (“Screw up again, bubba, and you’ll be back on nights and weekends with Tuesday and Thursday off.”) Everyone who reports to the school board either has an ironclad contract, a very strong union or both.

Why would I want to jump into this sort of mess? Well, I can’t do any worse than the incumbents, and maybe I can do better. Health care costs are out of control, yet the latest round of contract negotiations made little effort to rein them in. Additions to school buildings have been haphazard at best, with little thought to future expansion or future technologies.

As far as the classrooms, I have some plans there, too. For starters, why does the grading period end more than two weeks before school does? My daughter – mortified when I started making lists of the exorbitant number of movies and TV shows she had watched in class during the school year – tried to sidestep the issue when I asked what she was doing now that the grading period had ended, but she still had weeks of school left. (“Parties,” one of her friends chimed in. “Don’t forget the field trips!” said another.)

Now, even though I’m part geek, I don’t think technology is the answer to everything. I believe it was Walt Mossberg at the Wall St. Journal who coined the term “Silicon Imperative” back in the early ‘90s, the idea that if something could be done on a computer, it had to be done on a computer. He didn’t buy in to it, and I don’t either (though my consulting business might be better off if I pretended that I do). That said, the school system here makes horrid use of technology. At my son’s elementary school, a single phone line services most of the school, and is answered by the busiest person in the building, the principal’s secretary. Need to get a message to your child’s teacher? Call the secretary. Need to doublecheck the time of a school trip? Call the secretary. There is another line to report absences, but she answers that, too. No voice mail, no email, no nada. When something comes home that I need to post on the Web site, it comes home on a sheet of paper in my son’s backpack. If I want it posted, I retype it.

Ditto for the middle school. About 90 pages of paperwork came home the first day of school. What depressing reading. Nowhere in there was anything said about learning or having fun or getting an education. Ninety pages of “You are a thug and we’re going to punish you if you get so much as a hair out of line.” I would have been much happier if I hadn’t had to read it, much less retype it. Unfortunately, the school administration said they didn’t know who had produced it, or even if it had been done on a computer. Maybe it’s time we get them a network and a document management system. And a better attitude.

Don’t even mention the school board itself. The official district website made it to April 2002 with the August 2001 “Welcome to school” letter as the lead item on the site. More than two years after many schools changed their hours, the old schedules were still posted. And Board meeting agendas often are posted after the meetings. I guess it keeps those pesky commuters from rushing home to comment on things.

It's a shame the job doesn't pay anything, but I'm used to not getting paid.

Anyway, in this version of reality, don’t vote me off the island, vote me onto the school board. I’m in New Jersey, so it’s OK if all of you call for absentee ballots. Now, we need to pick a campaign slogan, get a treasurer and find some contributors.