It's the Schools Stupid (Norwich ListServ)

I haven't seen the ballot so don't know if there are any contested school board seats this year, so at the risk of undermining someone's reelection effort I want to take a moment to praise our school board members (past and present) and plug an opportunity to rub elbows with a few of them this weekend.

Those who have been around long enough to remember Ruth Dwyer's contentious tenure on the Thetford School Board recall an object lesson in the politics of faction. Sincere frustration with local property tax levels was skillfully turned to an us-versus-them movement about fiscal and cultural differences. For Dwyer, this culminated in an unsuccessful gubernatorial run riding the same factional wedge she mastered in Thetford, writ statewide as "Take Back Vermont."

Around this same time Dwyer's factional methods carried over to Norwich politics and we entered our own us-versus-them period of revolving chairs in both the select board and planning commission. Remarkably, to me at least, the faction tactics barely lapped at the edges of our school board and the 900 lb gorilla school budget they attend.

I'm sure there are various opinions why the wedge issue for Thetford was blunted in Norwich, but I give real credit to our individual school board members during that time and since. They combined sensitivity to the disparate impact our property taxes impose with a public loyalty to the institution, the community, and one another that kept the focus on value instead of price alone.

At some point, I have to believe, years of administrative accretion, fiscal pressures from a prolonged economic downturn, and the legitimate concerns animating the more thoughtful proponents of school choice will place our schools at the center of a difficult political debate. When that day comes, we would all do well to remember the hard feelings twenty years ago in Thetford and strive to recall that where power resides with the people, there is no "them" here, just a bunch of "us."

In the meantime, this Saturday at 11, a group of us will be at Town Eating Day talking about our schools' relevance to our community beyond the "mere" education of our children. We hope some of our budget-weary school board members will attend and hope you'll join us.

http://www.towneating.org/Norwich_Town_Eating/Welcome.html