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Some of you know that my husband is on school committee in my town (and serves as Chair this year.) We have had a lot of cuts in the local school budget that has resulted in cuts of around $3 million over 4 years. (This is a small town, that is a devastating amount of money.)
Well, tonight, at the Town Meeting, 18 months of hard work, organizing, showing up at ice cream socials and honor society meetings and school picnics and talking with parents paid off. Some of the money got put back into the budget. We can have a program that monitors kids in Middle School to see if they are having trouble and try and ward off drop-outs. We could put the money back in for a social studies and an art teacher and Title I help for early readers. You see, we asked the parents to show up and help us out with the vote and they did. Overwhelmingly.
I know this is just a little backwater moment, but, damn that feels good. We no longer have kids in the public schools (which doesn't matter in the long run, the public schools are very important to any community) and this entailed a lot of work, but damn, it feels good to win one once in a while. It really does. (My husband is gone an average of two or three nights a week in the non-summer months working on school committee stuff.) This position is unpaid. My husband actually got a huge round of applause tonight for standing up to the Town Selectmen who had voted not to give the schools the money, even though they now had it. Parents came over and thanked him. So did the teachers and Administrators. It was 'a moment.' I think my husband does it for the kids and for his own internal beliefs. But 'those moments' are, OMG, amazing.
You know, this democracy thing ain't bad when it works. I wish we could try it nationally.
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