I have never seen anything like this and I’m probably never going to see this again. Thumbnail: At this past Saturday’s Town Meeting, the townfolk voted to HALF the School District Budget from $1.7 million to $800,000. Let that set in.
Now, let me repeat that.
The townfolk that were present at the meeting voted to cut the School District Budget in half.
So, do you think there was any reaction?
Oh boy, there certainly was – and it was on full display Monday night (3/14). While very few showed up at Town Meeting, it was clear that those that didn’t go to Town Meeting showed up for the School Board meeting; they had had two days to realize what had happened. And yes, you can be sure that almost all of them had kids in the Croydon school system.
Mad Killer Bees would have flown away, fearful for their lives rather than try to interact with them – SCARY is too kind of a word to use.
Unbelievable – I could say that it was clear that they weren’t holding THEMSELVES responsible – they were going after the SCHOOL BOARD for….wait for it…not “protecting” the budget from the Town Meeting vote. WHA???? Seriously?
That will be another post – it was and is a very SERIOUS problem.
And about the name-calling, nasty behavior, impoliteness? Yeah, that, too. Sure, I get it – kids. Protect the kids and their futures – I get it (been there, done that).
Upon reflection, I’ve told a few people that if there had been enough rope sitting around, there was a possibility (I would hope just about zero, but…) of a few lynchings happening. It certainly happened verbally and if you watch the SECOND video below, you’ll keep watching for the same reason people watch NASCAR races.
I put this short one up first as I finally couldn’t help myself but to say a few things but not until the mic became free (and THAT took hours) and most people had already left. This video shows me going up twice to the mic.
The second time I went up, I zeroed on a lady that you’ll recognize from the video below. She was one of those that kept blaming the School Board for what had happened – I flipped that narrative on her.
I pointed out that our Founders had said that our Republic depended on “informed and involved” citizens to be successful. I pointed out that she had it exactly BACKWARDS – she thought that the School Board was supposed to do her job for HER. That they were supposed to protect her (and her kids).
I told her that SHE was responsible to vote and to be responsible for protecting the School budget (and kids) IF that was what she wanted to do. School Board?
Not their job. She left rather confused and quiet after receiving my message.
Watching the entire meeting, it’s clear that this is what most of the Parents thought a School Board is supposed to do (it’s not, by the way). While this is 3 hours long and it all cements that attitude, you can get the gist of how the entire meeting went after 15 minutes (or less).
The actual meeting was supposed to be a “working” session for the SB members – given that half their budget vanished, they thought they were going to start exploring all kinds of alternatives – homeschooling, charter schools, VLACS, other online schools, learning pods….time to think out of the box. They understood that the status quo of what they had been doing had been shattered and they only had 19 days to submit their budget to the Dept of Revenue Administration.
ChairLady Jody Underwood (full disclosure: I have known Jody for years and her husband, Ian, is a Croydon Selectman (and was just re-elected) and writes for GraniteGrok) decided that while she would allow a Public Comment section at the top of the meeting, the rest of the time was to be spent brainstorming and “thinking outside of the box” given the constraints that the Town Meeting placed upon them to do what is required of them – provide an adequate education for the 80 school-aged children in Croydon.
Well, THAT plan didn’t last long and the SB members realized that such work wasn’t going to happen. They decided to continue to let people speak their minds – and they certainly did. As you watch however much of the second video, I think that “rantfest” is the perfect word was probably needed but about as ugly as it could get.
I’ll have more to say later.
A BLEG!!! We have 801 YouTube subscribers and we’d like to get to 1,000. Would you consider becoming one? It’s rather easy:
- Go to YouTube.com
- Search for “GraniteGrok”
- Click on the Subscribe button (see above).
See, EASY! And nothing else is required. You don’t have to come back to YouTube (although you may get notices when we put up new videos but we’ll post them on GraniteGrok anyways).
So, you ask, what’s in it for us? To be perfectly capitalistic about the whole thing – monitization (that new server isn’t going to pay for itself). We used to earn money from folks viewing our videos years ago and then YouTube changed the rules of the game. There are a number of parameters that YouTube requires before they will send us money for folks watching our stuff: number of videos (we’re way beyond that threshold), the amount of time per month that people watch our videos in whole or part thereof (we’re WAY over that as well), and the number of subscribers. In this regard, we’re short; we need 200 new subscribers.
So, the bleg (or “ask”) is to help us get to that number. It costs you nothing and it would result in some small amount of coin to put back into GraniteGrok in supporting our monthly costs and gear and software that helps to do more and better things. A simple click helps get us to that goal.
I made this ask a while ago and people responded – and many thanks for you doing that. I’m asking that others of you if you’d help us. If not, that’s fine – we appreciate you spending your valuable time reading the ‘Grok! If you would, well, many thanks for that as well.
