Supporting Public Education is supporting your School Board

If you pay taxes, you support public education. Supporting public education needs to go much deeper than that.

Public education, it is written, started out as preparing youth to become citizens (of our new nation). The Pledge of Allegiance still recited today is a good mirror of this. Then public education transformed into preparing youth to be a part of our booming industrialized nation in addition to citizenry. Further evolution started to focus on providing education to help individuals to better themselves to enter the workforce, in whatever capacity they envisioned or desired to pursue.

Providing your input as to what that preparation entails, is the responsibility of every resident of the school district.

As is common throughout our political system, even the school board is a representative form of democracy. We elect members to represent our collective thoughts. There will always be differing opinions, but the elected officials will vote what they think is the best course of action.

Those stepping up to be direct participants deserve our thanks and gratitude. School board members are some of the least political members of the democratic system, yet they are subject to much of the same scrutiny and divisiveness as their elected kin in much higher offices. Over time, divisive evolution of the school mission has taxed this system of representation.

Issues around how schools operate and what their mission is have been occurring for many decades. Desegregation, science, religion, curriculum and many other issues have made school board members feel like they need to look for cover. Now the issue of COVID management has many wondering why they stepped up to serve.

Showing support for your school board members, now as much as ever, is an important part of being a citizen. Communicating, respectfully, your thoughts and opinions is a necessary part of the process. Just as important is respecting the board members’ thoughts and opinions once they have heard from their constituents and decided how they will vote.