Two of the most important elective offices in the land..SoS & school board

Yes, the lowly school board is a MOST important office.. It's often a low-profile office where skills can be easily honed, and it's an office where the voters of tomorrow can be tended to.


School curriculums MUST have more attention to civics and government classes. Kids these days can graduate high school knowing very little, if anything, about how we elect people and why we elect them.

Imagine if every high school senior graduated and was registered (the 18 yr olds) already.. Imagine if they truly understood why a majority in the house and senate was important..how the primaries worked, how voting/registration worked.. How votes were counted, and why they are sometimes NOT counted?

Young people are fired up about things they are doing for the first time, and imagine how a bunch of 18 year old newly-registered, enthusiastic voters could make a difference..

School boards can insist that these things be taught to them, starting in ..say.. 4th grade.. By the time a kid graduated, they would be well-versed in how our government works.. The Cherry-tree/Lincoln walked miles to return a penny stuff is cute, but does not teach citizenship..

Instead of mythology, we need to be teaching facts and the true usage of votes.


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SoS is the position in state government that deals with the nuts and bolts of elections.. when they are held..how they are held, and this office (remember Katherine Harris?) can often determine who ends up as president, regardless of who got the most votes..

This is an office that most people do not pay much attention to, and this must be changed..

I think some are still appointees.

republicans built their juggernaut by fastidiously working from the bottom up..and their 30 year stealth campaign paid off starting in 2000..

Does this country even HAVE 30 years left in it?? Who knows? The point is this..

NO elective office should ever go unopposed..even lowly state offices should have a democratic candidate..even if they have little chance of winning.. We have to build a farm team, and people need to start somewhere.

We have spent too many years and way too much money, trying to buck a system that has been built up while we were looking away..

our money-people need to start paying attention to the races "down-ticket" and getting "little people" elected.. They will progress through the ranks, but they must first get inside the rooms where decisions get made..

from my experience, you have very little say over the yearly curriculum. My state (MA) has a list so long that even most of the things they are required to cover often get a passing glance at best through the school year. The literature lists are a mile long, the amount and type of math and science that must be covered, right down to the types of essays children must write are all governed by the states list of demands as well as the test that must be passed at the end of each year.

I fought for things such as this too. But I had to start with areas that make for a well rounded member of society like music, art, physical education and lost completely all the "homemaker" arts such as wood shop and basic cooking classes. There are no funds for things like that.

Unfortunately, there is not any way to encompass what I remember as citizenship class back into the main stream education. Having a club to study it as an after school program was the best that we could do. That included having the kids participate and attend local government boards meeting and then discussing them.

The best first hand experience we had was "Government Shadow Day" where we had students actually take the place of a government official for a day. We allowed them to "run the town" for the day so that each could get a different experience as to just how much it took to keep a town running from each department and what those jobs involved. They were shown the budgets and made the choices for that day. The day ended with a mock town meeting with the kids deciding what the "warrant" topics would be. They brought an article that would allow for debate and vote of creating a skate park in town for the kids. They debated it town meeting style, incorporated Roberts Rules in the debate as well, and eventually passed the article with some students (those that has served on the financial departments mostly) voting against the article.

Well, it stirred a fire in them. They enlisted some of the officials they had shadowed to actually place that article on a town meeting warrant for real. They promoted it and debated it in the real meeting just as they had in the mock meeting.

We now have a town sponsored skate park in town. They did swell!

As for money in the budget to add it to the curriculum ... I just can't say that it is there in most cities or towns. Wish it were different myself.


We also opened every school committee meeting with what we called "Spotlight on Excellence". What it was was a presentation to the school committee of something that was happening in the classes that was not the norm. A program or a lesson that was special in someway, above and beyond what they were required to do. The kids themselves came in to make the presentation and to give us feedback on how they felt about the program itself.

The best one, in my opinion, was what they called the "Discrimination Experiment". The kids had to make a video tape or other tangible presentation of their feeling about religious, gay, racial, handicap, economic or other form of discrimination.

I never failed to weep openly at that display, every year. To see that these kids got it and could express it back to the adults in that room gave me great hope.

Not kidding either. That is the top position for people to fight for in my area.