I fought the local school system 20 years ago in Lakeland, FL. I fought at the teacher level, I fought at the administration level, I fought at the school board level and I fought at the Superintendent level.
I won worthy victories at each level. But......they were victories for my child. None of these victories changed anything for anyone else. Only in one instance I did manage to force a change in county policy. And I would be surprised if that wasn’t revised a few years later after I was out of the picture.
That’s when the reality hit me of how few parents cared about the school system, or were willing to take the time and effort to do battle over anything. Many had no clue what was taking place - and didn’t want to know. Take a stand on principle? Too much time and effort. Especially in an area where one would likely butt heads with too many local power brokers. School boards are part of any local old boys network. Go along to get along.
My kid is grown. The wife and I live in another state, in a smaller town. Same thing here. Incompetence and corruption are at every level of government. Regardless of where you live or how conservative you think your area is, institutions like the school system are incompetent.
Given your experience, tell me if you think this could be an accurate story. One that was told to me by a close friend(in bullet point style)
- man gets fed up with the schools and how they’re being run.
- runs for school board and wins
- gets there and sees just how corrupt, incompetent, indifferent the board and leadership really are. Just care about the money and how much they can bring in
- principal in one of the schools gets caught stealing money..a pretty significant amount
- what do you think the phone calls he received, were about? They were about who was going to be the starting quarterback for the varsity football team and the original start was injured. No one cared about the principal stealing their money.
- he didn’t run again.
Do you think that’s believable? It happened.