A Democrat on the School Board + What a Novel Concept

By Janet M. Lis

Increasing communication with and engagement of the community is a key factor in my run for the school board. The schools are nurturing the children who are future of our community; this is a very important job.

Also, if you realize that voter registration in Delaware County is just about evenly split between Democrats and Republican, the absence of a Democrat on the school board means that a large portion of the population and the views they espouse are not represented.

But the important thing right now is to get voters out to the polls. And, because all eight of the people running for the four positions are cross-filed and appear on both Democrat and Republican primary ballots ("B" levers are Democrat and "A" levers are Republican), we have to make sure that our names are recognized. The registered Democrats running for RTMSD School Board are:

Janet M. Lis - levers B16 & A22 Meghan Suttle - levers B18 & A23 Jim Coyne - levers B20 & A20 John Nee - levers B22 & A18

The school board is often forgotten in the midst of all of the other issues of each day. That is until it comes to tax time + and then complaints arise about the taxes to be paid to support a quality education for the children of the community. That these children are the future of the community gets lost in this process. That many of those complaining have benefited from the education they obtained from the RTM schools gets lost. That the quality of the schools affects the value of their homes also gets lost.

The reality is that there is very little communication between those overseeing the school district and the members of the community. There is not much interaction at school board legislative meetings where members of community are granted three minutes to provide comments, to which there is very little, if any, response. Of course community members can attend the randomly rotating school board committee meetings where there is more information provided and more opportunity to make comments and ask questions, but few people do attend, and usually only when a specific issue is to be discussed.

So there are two parts to this: the school district should provide more opportunity for the community to be involved with the issues facing the district, and the community response has to be active. There has to be an engagement in the process on both sides + to learn about the issues, to engage in discussion and to work to produce the best outcome in the most efficient way. The school district administration has to learn what is most important to the community in terms of education, and the community has to learn what restrictions the school district administration faces. In order to work on the outcomes which most benefit the community and also address the needs of the administration, community residents must be engaged, and they must show this in the upcoming election by voting.

The introduction of the two-party system into the RTM School Board, with greater representation of a more diverse portion of the community, a greater focus on community engagement and use of ideas from the community, increased efficiency in the district, and, certainly not last or least, maintenance of the focus on achievement + these are the reasons I am running for the RTM School Board.