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In second grade, my sister was balancing on a recently painted green, wooden teeter-totter at our local playground when she slipped and fell. Two weeks later, the small, almost pinpoint scrape on her leg had turned to blood poisoning. When I am faced with a particularly difficult decision, I recall this incident to remind me that balancing is tough work and failing to successfully balance can have long term and occasionally unforeseen consequences. This usually inspires me to keep looking for the right place to plant my feet.
The past several years, our district has studied ways to develop the middle school day.
Both the proposal to flip-flop the elementary/middle school start times and the latest proposal, to shift time to core academic subjects, have required the School Board to balance a number of significant factors. Board members are expected to take an umbrella view of any problem being considered.
We hear and contemplate all the perspectives, weigh all the issues, investigate all the alternatives, and insure accountability.
This is our duty as elected representatives – to learn everything we can about a proposal under consideration. Therefore, reading hundreds of letters and e-mails, interpreting
dozens of professionally authored education articles, asking hundreds of questions (of administrators, teachers, students, and community members), visiting
our middle schools, and participating in numerous meetings is just part of the job.
As I see it, like every member of our school board, I labored long and hard to come to the
board table informed and prepared to vote.
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Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that when people take various and sometimes opposing
positions on an issue, someone will be disappointed. The board appreciates the time and energy that was expended to express opinions and provide information or alternatives.
We depend on and highly value such input. Some cared so passionately about their position that they came to believe that those who could not agree with them did not
care at all. As I see it, no school district undertakes an in-depth and controversial evaluation of their middle school day without an honest desire to improve student learning. Though several school board members struggled with the administrative recommendation, they never wavered in their belief that the subject was before them for the right reasons. Now that the board has voted, those members who voted not to shift time to academic subjects will do what countless school board members in the same type of situation have done before them -- support the consensus of the board. Board members will do this because they understand that there are now new issues to balance. As I see it, paying attention to our current environment allows us to carefully and deliberately plant our feet, and avoid a costly slip and fall.
As I See It
By Diane Johnson, School Board President
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