Vacant Board Position

At the December board meeting, the board was once again unable to make a decision regarding the vacant board position. At the November meeting, the vote had split 3-3 between Preston Baxter and Steve Moser. Prior to the December meeting, rumors began circulating that Sarah Ramirez intended to change her vote from Preston to Steve and that her stated reason for doing so was that she had concluded that Preston and his wife did not support teachers. Preston addressed these rumors when given the opportunity at the meeting (See Part 6 of the video posted on 12/12 below). When it came time to vote, everyone voted as they had in November but Sarah abstained. Since the board needs four votes (a majority of a seven person board) to make an appointment, the position will remain vacant until school board elections this spring. To give credit, several board members (but not Sarah) had the good manners to apologize to Preston and Rory Baxter for the unpleasantness they had endured simply because Preston had applied for the vacant board position.

Preston has decided to run for the position in May and has started a Facebook page ("Preston Baxter for Central 13J School Board") to introduce himself to the community. I would encourage you to take a look - I'm sure he'll be adding more as time goes on.

As the election approaches, I'm hoping to put together a public forum for board candidates. It would be great to have some real dialog about the issues we are confronting. I'm also hoping that others will consider running for the three positions that will be decided this spring. We need to get beyond the notion that running against an incumbent is an insult to them. If any one's feelings are that easily hurt, they should probably stay out of the public arena. We need real candidates who will stand up and make the case that they should represent us. The all too frequent uncontested "non-races" we have had in the past have not served us very well. I would like to see several candidates for each position and I would like to see them actually campaign. If education is important, it's worth fighting for.

For now, we can probably expect more deadlock on the board. Given the current state of affairs, that may not be an entirely bad thing. I'm very glad to see that board members no longer fall into lock step with one another and even have debates and real differences of opinion. Nor do they just "go along to get along." When I first joined the board back in 2006, board members often behaved like rubber-stamp robots rather than thinking, questioning leaders. We've come a long way, although there is still much room for improvement.

We've begun the process of revitalizing our local democracy; let's keep that process moving forward.