Trego's Mountain Ear

It’s time.  It has been a challenging six years.  When I started, Trego was funded at 4 ANB – ANB is how the Office of Public Instruction abbreviates  “’average number belonging”.  Four  isn’t very many students.  Our first challenge was to change that downward trend.  The second challenge was the lack of a county superintendent of schools.  The commissioners listened and reinstated the position – just in time for a teacher insurrection led by a board member who had moved to Rexford but insisted she was still on the board.  We survived that challenge.

So where is the board as I am stepping off?  Simply enough, personnel is policy.  It has taken a while, but we have a lead teacher who agrees that our school needs to be home school friendly.  Our clerk is also a certified teacher (science).   We’re recruiting for an additional full-time K-8 teacher.  We have a team that consists of educators.  We have a team that knows what the state standards are and plans to teach so the students exceed them.

Trego exceeded those standards before – back when Mike Sartori taught the upper grades, our graduates went to Eureka and spent the next year and a half on the honor roll.  That return starts next Fall.  I will not be on the board as Trego school goes back into the promised land – but it will happen.

Will my replacement do as good a job?  Hopefully better – when I came on the board, we needed Dave, Kenny and I to make needed changes.  Funded for only four students, it had to be done.  With a reputation as a failing school, recruiting great teachers was more than a challenge.

Over my six years, most of the tough decisions have been made by 3-2 votes.  When the board is unanimous, there is little conflict.  I’ve prioritized decisions this way:

1. Is this decision best for the students?
2. Is this decision best for the school facility?
3. Is this decision best for the employees?
4. Is this decision best for the trustees?

Often the decision that makes things easiest for the trustees – and particularly the board chair – is the poorest for the higher priorities of students, community and facility.  If you leave the board without having been called bad names, you probably haven’t done your job.

I leave the school board with a single slogan stamped into my mind’s blackboard: It is not enough to believe in miracles – you must rely on them. 

I leave the board having been elected and re-elected by acclamation – the only candidate running.  This ballot, the one that replaces me, has five names for two positions.  It is good.  I will admit that I pushed to have a small levy added to the ballot – I hope it increases the number of votes cast.

When my father left the board about 60 years ago, he was certain that the school would continue – with the railroad relocation Trego school had adequate funding to continue forever, and the building was new.  In retrospect, he didn’t anticipate the equalization decision that took three quarters of the taxes paid by Trego property owners out of the community, and he didn’t anticipate the long run of nepotism that occurred.  With his example, I recognize that, while Trego school today is the best place for your first or second grader, a bad board and poor teachers can revert quickly. 

I don’t expect a board with five good trustees at all times – the tough decisions will be made by three members.  The trick is electing a majority of good trustees.  I have a couple of guidelines – the school employees should stay out of the campaigns.  Entirely out. Period.  We’ve had too many times in the past where an employee and a couple board members ran the school – usually in the way they thought was correct, but when I came onto the board, Trego was funded at 4 ANB.

We do not get the government we deserve – that’s a fallacy.  We get the poorest government we are willing to tolerate.  Democracy is probably not the best form of government – but it has provided the best governments history has to show us.  We need community involvement – and we need voters to select the candidates that come from the right side of the bell curve.

My advice to the new board members?  It is not enough to believe in miracles.  You must rely on miracles.  When the community supports the school, those miracles somehow come through when they’re needed.