I want talk about how it really looks and feels to serve on Saucon Valley School Board. Lately, I’ve received several letters from citizens, and there are some misapprehensions. I hope this will clear up a few of those.
Spanish immersion teacher Joseph Schoenly and Saucon Valley Elementary School students Marli Harlacher and Landon Small address the school board during a recent meeting. (Contributed photo)
I don’t understand where the dark fantasy of some sinister conspiracy to “hide the truth” comes from in Saucon. It’s not a fantasy I ever believed, even when I ran for office, nor did I ever feel hopeless or negative about our school’s future. I can’t live that way. I have to look for the positive in our district, in its employees and in our teachers, if only for the sake of the children whose dreams we’re entrusted to safeguard. Yes, we can always improve academically, but we also need to believe we can improve—and we have to project that, too.
First of all, no matter what any campaign (including my own) has ever said about all the previous school boards, every single school board member I’ve met, past or present, has indeed given countless hours of the time, unpaid, in good faith, to help the community. Anyone who would ever be stupid enough to run for school board with the idea they were going to be able to secretly advance some narrow political or personal agenda soon learns that it just doesn’t work that way.
You must cooperate with other board members and the administration who run the district, or you’re simply going to be marginalized. Why? Because people who insist on their own vision above everyone else’s, who aren’t constitutionally capable of conciliation, are often not easy to get along with in any sphere of life, and school board is no different.
While it’s one thing to talk tough as a national or state politician, on school boards you’re literally sitting across conference tables with your neighbors, for countless hours, every month.
I need to get along with die-hard Trumpies and hard-left libs, and I can admire aspects of their service and thinking on school matters. On the board, surprisingly, we often find that we all agree on most stuff. Not on everything, but on most matters.
This isn’t because “we’re all in cahoots.” It’s not because there’s some big “conspiracy of cooperation.” It’s because there’s an almost endless amount of work to do, and thousands of students and family members counting on you, and you can’t indulge in point-scoring and fruitless conflicts and vendettas. You have to move on.
Sooner or later, the egomaniac (whether it’s the power-driver or the eternally suffering “victim” of everything) is going to be found out in this context. So you must try to get along, and you need to learn how to be civil, or you end up getting nothing.
I think marriage is a good analogy. You go in with all kinds of idealism and fire, and you remain because your partner and circumstances inspire you to better ideals and to a truer appreciation of love. There’s still idealism and fire—and the occasional “date night”—but you have to learn, sooner or later, to give and take. Occasionally, you have to take out a trash bag, have it bust open in the driveway, clean it up yourself and come back inside the house, smiling and keeping your mouth shut about your driveway cleanup operation, because, frankly, you don’t get awards for doing what you signed up for.
This is not to say that there aren’t earnest and important conflicts on school board. But as some of the previous board members no doubt now think to themselves about me and my “class of 2023,” school board service is deeply humbling. You find out how unimportant you are. You find out that your big mouth only gets you so far.
And the work doesn’t stop. Ever. Citizens complain. Budgets creak. Lawsuits occur. A kid does something stupid to another kid at the middle school. But you just plough ahead, keeping your head down and being polite even when you don’t feel like it, working with these once-strangers-now-neighbors across from you and try to work through the problems.
You aren’t given Gandalf the Grey’s magic staff. You won’t be able to make everyone love you and fix all problems. You’ll be lucky to complete one campaign goal in four years, and if you do, it probably won’t feel as you expected.
On the other hand, one evening, a roomful of Saucon children will speak Spanish to you in a board meeting; a leaky school roof will be fixed; a local Saucon high school kid will win a national academic award and head to the Ivy League; a tax compromise will be reached. Good happens, too.
If you think you can do a better than us, you’re welcome to try. That’s the beauty of local democracy. When I ran for office, I know I had all the answers. The one big thing I’ve learned since is that everyone else does, too.
Bill Broun, who lives in Hellertown, is a freshman member of Saucon Valley School Board. He is a professor at East Stroudsburg University and a novelist.