11-05-17
An open letter to the Port Angeles School Board and Community:
A Change on the Port Angeles School board
Dear Board Members and Superintendent Dr. Jackson:
When expressing dissatisfaction with the directions our nation travels, we often hear the suggestion, “Run for school board.”
A powerful sense of duty to serve freedom motivated me to become a school director candidate. Transparently, I played the candidate role, making my best effort to win, while knowing if elected, I would place myself, publicly, in a most vulnerable and uncomfortable position.
Before becoming a school director, I did not fully grasp the extent of planning and bureaucratic detail involved in serving. I expected much of this, but did not realize how greatly state and federal funding influences board decisions.
Though my extensive research on board issues that most troubled me, I have learned much. I learned that individuals holding conflicting values can work together civilly and appreciate this courtesy you show. I have observed our board members’ love and enjoyment of children, and earnest dedication to always improve student learning and well-being. I entertain no doubt whatsoever about your good intentions. The well-chosen administrative staff provide very competent, efficient, dedicated service to students, teachers, and our community. They consistently make an effort to be helpful and polite. Teachers with whom I have become somewhat familiar appear competent, dedicated to teaching, and genuinely concerned with student’s general well-being.
A disappointing low in my board experience is the night a director angrily intolerantly, and impatiently expressed personal disapproval of John Didrikson’s three-minute, religiously oriented comments. Weren’t his good intentions to bring our awareness of the need for God (or a higher power) and the teaching of virtues, the primary educational objective of our Founding Fathers? These values, our Founders taught, are essential to the preservation of liberty. Mr. Didrikson obviously hoped school directors would utilize his advice to help our students.
Was America Founded to Be Secular? 4:58 minutes
https://www.prageru.com/courses/history/was-america-founded-be-secular
(You can read the transcript by clicking below the videos)
Were the Founders Religious? 4:55 minutes
https://www.prageru.com/courses/history/were-founders-religious
I did not think individual school directors had the prerogative to publicly announce which comments are valuable and which comments are unwelcome. I thought board policy disapproves of directors’ responses to audience comments during the board meetings. Should those wanting to participate only make comments that please directors? Did this incident suggest that the board does not value our First Amendment?
Postscript: I wrote the following about professional growth etc. because, when I asked questions about her proposed expenditure, I asked Director Kelly if she could provide a direct benefit to students from her D.C. trip for which she asked approval. She responded, “Not everything is for the students,” and she thought she should be able to have (or maybe was entitled to) professional growth and the district was only paying for this trip. WSSDA paid for all her other D.C. trips, etc. I voted against her expenditure the only opposition vote, again.
Concerning professional growth: Since Washington State School Directors Association, (WSSDA) is a state agency, don’t tax dollars provide for all board expenses including their professional growth? If given the opportunity to vote on use of their taxes to send school board members to WSSDA conferences or $2500 professional growth trips to D.C., what percentage of taxpayers would approve?
Why does a board member’s self-development become the taxpayers’ financial responsibility? Why should our desire for self-development with taxpayers’ funds, surpass taxpayers’ desire to improve their own circumstances with these same dollars taken through taxation?
At WSSDA’s summer information session I attended as a school board candidate, the WSSDA presenter’s words’ “After the board votes, the board speaks with one voice” This disregard for freedom brought anxiety.
Becoming dissatisfied with part of the WSSDA conference’s political agenda, I investigated and learned that without my knowledge, and thus without my consent, I became an unwilling member of our state’s enormous education bureaucracy conceived to “manage and control” school boards. This disregard for my freedom of association and freedom of choice, immensely disheartened me.
Also, on the Internet, I found that at a WSSDA Networking Breakfast, a topic was “Deviating Behaviors—dealing with individual board members and superintendents who, after the board has decided to adopt policy governance, do not accept or respect the model;” and “One Voice Concept—The board speaks with one voice, or not at all.”
This arrogantly perverse mindset seeking to control the behavior of those we should consider as equal and disregard for natural rights to freedom of speech appalled me! If I had known all of this about WASSDA beforehand, I would never have become a candidate.
www.policygov.com/documents/PGRoundtableNotes_002.doc
Concerning minority rule:
Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number. . . compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always had a right to win it and to keep it, whenever they have power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it.
–John Milton, 1607-1674
At a recent board meeting, we heard an applause from Roosevelt Elementary School’s staff after Michelle Olsen, school principal, stated that their school surpassed the 50% eligibility for free lunch (which would be followed by receipt of more federal funds). This incident provides an exceedingly troublesome example of what appears to be a steadily growing mindset. After more recent news a slight decrease of students using the free lunch plan, I welcomed one director’s comment, that this decrease “is not necessarily a bad thing”
Millenniums of history record humankind’s propensity to evade the reality that belief in a higher power, virtue, individual freedom, personal responsibility, hard work are requisite for stable families, stable individuals, and a prospering nation of happy people. Careful, thoughtful examination of our American history and all history shows that as these values deteriorate and as multiplying government welfare programs increase citizens’ dependency, society further declines.
Didn’t more than fifty percent of our students receiving “free lunch” tell Roosevelt staff that parents are not thriving, are unemployed or underemployed, have accepted a dependency fostering “benefit’ that could decrease their endeavor to fulfill their parental responsibility, and weakens children’s ability to learn parental responsibility for their own children’s future? Do all citizens understand the economic fact, consequences, and moral implications of the “free lunch’ fallacy not taught in public schools?
Both the private sector and government create moral hazards, but in the private sector, individuals can choose whether or not to participate. Government’s moral hazards ensnare elected representatives, taxpayers, and welfare recipients into a seemingly bottomless quagmire of ruinous consequences.
Have you ever considered that before passing a proposed policy, program, or bill, all elected representatives should first question if approval may do harm? Do elected representatives realize that government welfare programs undermine individual liberty, sense of self-worth (especially for men), the role of parents (especially for fathers) and hinder ability to improve character by overcoming hardships. What are other untended consequences? Without free lunches, would parents truthfully be unable be provide lunch for their children? How do we really know? Are dependent people free and happy people?
Recently, driving through Yellowstone National Park, I noted the familiar forest service signs reminding people that feeding the animals carries a legal penalty. Do you know the history of this law? Making animals dependent is illegal because doing so gradually causes them to forget how to care for and feed themselves.
In the past, bears that became dependent on campers also became aggressive and more dangerous, as though they thought they were entitled to human’s food. Park rangers tried, numerous times to relocate these dangerous bears, but addicted to easily acquired food, bears continued to pose a risk to campers. Eventually, the rangers had no choice but to kill these park menaces. Of course, wild animals did not rationalize an entitlement. Only humans are vulnerable to thinking this way if they become accustomed to an easier, though unfulfilling or happy life of relying on others for basic, essential needs. Would you want this to happen to you?
Might many of those first to decry the feeding of wild animals be the same well-intentioned continuing to advocate government feeding programs such as SNAP?
Do you know that after spending twenty trillion dollars in government programs designed to help people, welfare programs have produced the opposite effect, which explains why poverty has not decreased since the War on Poverty began over 50 years ago?
Extensive disintegration of the traditional family unit is the product of well-intentioned elected representatives’ welfare programs futilely trying to solve society’s ills. Government’s welfare programs often repeat treatment with the same cure that causes the disease. Frequently, some of our sick societies’ disease symptoms result in adverse childhood experiences or ACE (education’s newest pedagogical vogue word). The only possible cure will come from restoration of deference to God (an inanimate power higher than ourselves) in conjunction with nurturing of traditional, time-tested, rightful parental responsibilities, personal responsibility, a Judeo/Christian based justice system, and individual freedom.
I have become more convinced that public education strays increasingly distant from our Founding Fathers vision a formal education’s objective. You may ask why, I evaluate by our Founders’ standards. Though they were imperfect humans, our Founders based their values on eternal principals and history’s lessons. These timeless values provide critical guidance today. Without these values, America would never have become freedom’s beacon, the nation to which millions fled, confident they would gain freedom to pursue their own well-being and dreams without repressive government interference.
Public education’s bureaucracy stifles and overwhelms me. I feel an aversion to using the earnings of others for state and federal programs that undermine our liberty and American culture. My concern for board civility restrains what I might otherwise voice more freely outside of the board.
After many years, one of my primary objectives remains the reduction of the size, scope, and power of government which will, in turn, increase freedom and enable more citizens to prosper. I have decided that my time spent on board duties is not adequately productive.
In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s biography, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, when told he should join the German Christians (in order to stop Nazi destruction of Christianity in Germany) Bonhoeffer responded, “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
Though I believe I might be able to fill the role of school board in some other state, doubtlessly, you will willingly agree that on this board (picture if you will), I am like kangaroo in the Arctic. I am the elephant in the room.
As of today, I resign my position as a director of the PASD school board.
I earnestly hope you will find time to read the following old, but exceptionally relevant essay by Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education. I suspect that you have not been exposed to these following compelling ideas with potential to alter your way of thinking.
Victims of Social Leveling
https://admin.fee.org/files/doclib/socialleveling.pdf
I provide additional reading and listening material. If the possibility exists that board decisions actually harm rather than help children and families, wouldn’t you feel a responsibility to patiently, tolerantly read and listen with an open mind, to learn why this may be true?
You can learn how to begin reversing the destruction of American culture and foster a healthier, happier, and more prosperous American society. For the asking and searching, a plethora of material exists to learn the blessings of liberty.
I hope you will not fear ideas that challenge your mindset. David Horowitz, raised by card-carrying Communist parents was a leading Marxist for approximately twenty-five years of his adulthood. After his painful acceptance of Marxism’s disastrous consequences and acceptance of truth (Radical Son), David Horowitz became one of today’s most ardent voices for liberty and traditional American values. An awakening to reality has changed the minds of many once on the political left.
I wish you well.
Sincerely,
Susan Shotthafer
Black Fathers Matter, (5:20 min. You can read the transcript by clicking below the video)
https://www.prageru.com/courses/race-relations/black-fathers-matter
Morals and the Welfare State (4 parts)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/morals-welfare-state-part-1/
Powerful insights about welfare the state (11:21 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RpiGrykBak
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPb2dS2lBH0
Public Policy: Parental Responsibility:
Transforming the Culture of Fatherlessness
https://acton.org/public-policy/educational-choice/parental-responsi/transforming-culture-fatherlessness
Are We Good Enough for Liberty?
https://fee.org/media/14990/arewegoodenoughforlibertyreed.pdf
The Law
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
How Welfare Harms Kids
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/06/bg1084nbsp-how-welfare-harms-kids
The Real Root Cause of Violent Crime: The Breakdown of the Family
http://character-education.info/Articles/Fagan.pdf
The Collapse of Marriage and the Rise of Welfare Dependence
http://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/the-collapse-marriage-and-the-rise-welfare-dependence
How Welfare Undermines Marriage and What to Do About It
http://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/how-welfare-undermines-marriage-and-what-do-about-it
Urban America’s Underclass: More Money Won’t Solve the Problems
https://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2017/06/29/urban-americas-underclass-more-money-wont-solve-the-problems-n2348070
The Worldview that Makes the Underclass
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-worldview-that-makes-the-underclass/
Moral Hazards
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/99/Moral-Hazards.htm
Walter E. Williams, Black Families, and the Welfare State
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzNYCPZXvlw
John Stossel – The State Against Blacks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OIBOSJTwg
Fatherless Day
https://thoughtcatalog.com/james-swift/2014/06/fatherless-day/
Fatherlessness
https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=PG13F01&q=fatherlessness
Effects of Fatherlessness on Children’s Development,
http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF14K18.pdf
Welfare dependency and lack of discipline are turning black boys into criminals,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7856405/Welfare-dependency-and-lack-of-discipline-are-turning-black-boys-into-criminals.html
