Your Board of Ed

So I never went to any meetings or even thought about the BoE of our town till recently. There was a referendum the superintendent was trying to pass to get money to our school. It failed 3 times. The most recent was one they did last week. It got into a pretty heavy debate on our local town FB page. Now, I did vote Yes bc I have children in the school. I don't like the way it was represented, but I do believe the schools need money. Of course we have a lot of original people in our town including a 55+ community. There's also a lot of young families moving in as well. It's a very large town in central NJ.
ANyway. as I take more of a look at the BoE the guys yelling about the referendum are older men that don't even have kids in the school. Of course they don't want to put money into the school. My question is... why would anyone who doesn't have kids in the school want to run or be on the board? Of course I know the answer. Because it's their tax dollars too. They just don't understand that when they want to sell their home to a young family they're also making it harder for themselves. Maybe I'm a little bitter about the whole thing. Most of the young families on the FB page are staying quiet. It's a lot of grumpy people yelling about the superintendent and the BoE.

Your Board of Ed

I frequented meetings when DS 1 was in Pre-K because they were trying to push for full day K.

Most of the folks on our BOE are older with children finished in the district. They got their seats back when their kids were in school and just stayed as members (either they ran unopposed or the incoming candidate wasn't appealing). Most of our Board though is open to make changes in the school district that help the community (we had one incident recently in which everyone wanted to unseat them but, they along with the superintendent listened to the community and brought back the individual in question).

Your Board of Ed

My friend's dad does it. He started a million years ago when he had 3 kids in the district. He just never stopped. He truly cares about the district and has two kids who are teachers and wouldn't accept anything less of him. Not to mention, the district effects his own property value of course.

Re: Your Board of Ed

Thank you for the responses. Those make sense. What I'm seeing is people running for the board now that are retired and haven't been dealing with the school for years. They're the ones saying there is no need for new boilers bc they can last 100 years or the schools don't need AC bc they were fine back in the day when they went to school.

I better start going to board meetings. LOL!

Re: Your Board of Ed

Sometimes it's a way to get into politics. There are perks to being a board member too which people may want to take advantage of.

Re: Your Board of Ed