Coupeville’s School Board — five adults, no shenanigans.
I would be a lousy school board director.
I enjoy my gossip too much, I don’t have the intestinal fortitude for combing through endless financial work sheets at 3 AM, and, most of all, even at age 52, I’m too immature.
A lifetime spent working in video stores, writing about prep sports contests, and taking care of babies has kept my internal clock set too far back.
My back and neck, having born the horrors of farm work and dishwashing (and a few sucker punches from those babies) remind me that my birth certificate lists 1971 as the year I popped into this world.
But my heart still lies to me from time to time and tries to get me to say “Hello, my fellow teens.”
At which point my brain alertly backhands me, and I promptly sit my butt back down on the rock-hard bleachers and get back to assaulting the back and neck we previously spoke about.
So why does this come up now?
Because, as a new edition of the Coupeville School Board kicks off tonight, I am once again reminded how blessed we are here in Cow Town to have five adults in the room.
Men and women who put in the work, stand tall in the fire, and don’t hide when they make their opinions known.
In Nancy Conard, Sherry Phay, Alison Perera, Morgan White, and Charles Merwine, we have a group which doesn’t sit hunched over, phone clutched to their chest, firing off thousands of anonymous tweets which bob along like piles of dog poop in what the French call “a gigantic global sewer.”
It’s a proud prairie tradition, one which former directors such as Venessa Matros, Christi Sears, Glenda Merwine, Don Sherman, Brent Stevens, Karen Bishop, and the late, great Kathleen Anderson also upheld.
Our board directors walk into the room, look us in the eye, say what they believe, and explain their stance.
We, the tax-paying public, may agree, or we may not.
But our directors don’t run like spooked rabbits, they don’t cower away in dark corners where the only voices are those from their personal echo chamber, and they don’t waste hours playing social justice warrior when nobody’s listening to their anonymous bleating.
While being too scared to put their names or faces behind their words.
Pro tip – a photo of a generic muffin card from a store in Anacortes sent via anonymous Twitter burner account means diddly and squat.
They give those cards to tourists as well, skippy.
Our directors don’t fire off anonymous emails trying to spark a financial boycott against any who would call them out on their crap — while being too stupid to realize those ads were one-time payments and the money is long gone.
Anonymous person says what?
Our directors also don’t embrace hate-soaked loons who whine for FIVE HOURS, only to reveal they didn’t actually read more than 25% of the article they’re complaining about since “it didn’t fit what I feel.”
While happily using Wi-Fi from the cafe they’ve been camped out in, while failing to buy even a water.
My sister, a former barista, would have taken a large metal spoon to your freeloading, whiny ass back in the day.
Good thing modern-day college students are more forgiving, I guess.
The point I’m making is, I appreciate where I live, and that the people of Coupeville — and many others from other cities, state, and countries — reach out to me to talk about my writing.
Some are happy, some not so much, but either way, they can reach me because I don’t hide my identity.
It’s right there at the top of the blog, with a semi-recent photo of myself.
Like the Coupeville School Board, I stand behind my words.
And I’m grateful I don’t live in a place where school board directors waste considerable time and their district’s money just for the chance to piss off their superintendent, who is hoping against hope they don’t have to publicly deal with a much-bigger fall out.
To school board directors in all areas, current or future, take a good, hard look at how these men and women conduct themselves.
And then be like Coupeville’s five-pack. The adults in the room.
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The Coupeville School Board will hold a community forum next week to discuss the district’s financial state and the process for building a budget for the 2024-2025 school year.
