Getting Out the Vote
Hello, all, today is school board election day throughout New Jersey. The Spouse, as I have blogged before, is one of four candidates vying for three seats on the nine-member Board of Education in our township. The other three candidates are running as a slate, which we believe is illegal, but illegality has never stopped folks in New Jersey from doing what they want.
We believe the current superintendent and some board members do not want to see my wife elected because, having been a teacher in our local high school who was placed in an illegal classroom situation (having more than a certain number of special needs students in a classroom without an aide), she knows where the skeletons are buried. It was a student in one of her classes that shoved her, causing her a permanent back injury and forcing her retirement from the district.
Does she have an ax to grind? Perhaps, but don’t we all? Her ax will be providing a quality education for the district’s student body, which in the last 20 years has become increasingly black, Latino and Asian. She promises she won’t rubber-stamp recommendations, but ask lots of questions and vote based on the information and her conscience.
Her three opponents have issued literature that basically says, “vote for us just because.” No listing of position statements on issues, no qualifications, nothing. But unfortunately, that’s politics even in school board elections, which traditionally see turnouts of around 10 percent of registered voters.
My wife’s gotten a lot of help from others in the township in her campaign, and of course I’m hoping she can pull this off. I’m a little nervous, but I have to remember that God’s got this. I ask for your prayers as well.
And you know I’ll update ya’ll as soon as we know the outcome.
