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I went to school in the ‘70’s. In the 8th grade I had a ‘science’ teacher, that wasn’t teaching, but sharing way too much of his personal life daily in class. I was hungry for an education and wrote a petition to get rid of him. I distinctly recall putting into the petition that this ‘teacher’s’ salary was a waste of tax-dollars because he was not giving us an education, but tales of his personal life. I had a number of students sign the petition,until the administration got wind of what I was doing. In typical ‘70’s fashion, I was sent to ‘counseling’-come to find out that particular ‘teacher’ was the brother-in-law of the principal(can you say nepotism). In hindsight, I see that was the early days of the deterioration of public education. I now live in a very small town, with a school system of approx 930 students K-12, with 14 administrators each earning $100,000+. When the Board of Ed is questioned on ANYTHING, it’s met with disrespect, disdain, and contempt. Oh yeah, and the BOE never answers specific, closed-ended questions. In typical liberal fashion the BOE plays us vs. them, pitting taxpayers versus parents—divide and conquoer. A parent, who’s heart may have been in the right place, but is terribly misguided at a public meeting about a defeated budget was sooo proud her 9yr old knew a big word—that word, ‘entitled’. It’s very sad, but we must not be deterred, on the contrary, individual citizens need to get involved. I’d suggest starting in your own backyard—go to public meetings in your own town, start asking questions. It’s a pretty safe bet if you start to ask questions, you’re likely to experience disdain, but again do not give up. It’s likely that most of the folks on a Board of Ed and administrators in the school have never been questioned—all the more reason to get involved.

Pretty typical experiences.

Going to those BOE sessions are a lot like a congressional town hall meeting. Those are also fun. They LOVE to see me come through the door.

Back in the 80s, one of my boys brought home a school social studies book that was filled with clearly socialist/progressive nonsense.

I made it a point to show up at the next school board meeting.

After the board members took an hour to tell us what a wonderful job the schools were doing “educating” our children, the floor was opened to Q&A from the parents.

I was the second or third to be recognized. I spent a few moments ragging our local member for talking down to one of the previous questioners who had a very legitimate concern about the cost and the safety of all the bussing then going on. I apparently got through to her – a classic elitist Radcliff graduate – as she kept her mouth shut for most of the rest of the meeting.

I then asked any of the 4 board member to explain why it was that the book my son had shown me looked like it had been written in the Soviet Union?

When I finished the question over half the parents applauded and made positive comments.

One of the board members took an incredibly ignorant stab at answering the question. When I said as much, the Superintendent of Schools – a pretty decent and, it turned out, conservative older fellow – stepped up and remarked that he, too, had an ongoing concern in the area of textbooks and went on to offer that the problem was (and still is) that “…most of them are written by folks who teach at liberal Eastern universities.” He continued by saying that while many of those decisions were made at the state level, he asked any parents who knew of alternative publishers to get in touch with him.

When the meeting broke up, over two dozen parents surrounded me and asked if I could steer them to organizations where they could learn more about how to cure the problems they were also having with the government schools.

I was more than happy to do so. :-))