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Better late than never does not apply
(by Walt Brown - April 29, 2008)
April 15, 2008: Voting for the local and regional school budgets and board of education members; polls close at 9 p.m. By no later than 10 p.m., the results are usually available.
I had a pretty good idea of the state of the budget, but not board members elected/ defeated when I turned on the television at 10 p.m. But imagine my surprise when, at 11:44 p.m., there was a commercial, in the middle of a M*A*S*H* re-run (not public television) sponsored by the Bergen County Education Association (BCEA), urging people to vote for the school budgets throughout the county. Yo, guys, the polls closed…
As a retired teacher and lifetime member of BCEA, it was a little embarrassing. So, too, was a letter I received a couple of years ago, asking me to vote for a local budget – which one is unimportant. The letter was filled with so many misspelled words, so much lousy grammar, and so many uninspiring adjectives that I corrected it and sent it back. That, clearly, was worse than the BCEA commercial.
I've been a Hillsdale resident since 1951, I graduated from George G. White School in '61 and Pascack Valley in '65, and I loved – truly loved – the education and guidance I received in both schools. Pascack Valley was so thoroughly wonderful an experience that I never missed a day. Four years, perfect attendance. I asked about an award, but nobody had ever had perfect attendance before.
Thus it becomes "mixed emotion" time when the budgets appear. I understand the importance of the best possible education for our children. We are truly blessed that they are receiving an education here, and not, for instance, in Arkansas or West Virginia. I still love our school systems. But I never sent any children there. It was just me, and that stopped 43 years ago.
Yet despite my joyous memories of two wonderful schools, and despite the phrase "fixed income," I do what I can. But it hurts when something like the BCEA commercial makes the event look foolish, or when I receive a letter asking me to support education but written by someone who may not have had perfect attendance, to be kind in the description.
If our schools are to be the best they can be, then those who promote education need to jump totally onto the bandwagon. Air the commercial when it matters, not when it would be held up to ridicule. Send the voters carefully written letters that bespeak the quality of our educators, not the need to re-educate them.
It hurt. At least with the commercial, I got some levity out of it. I imagined a commercial touting the new and amazing "horseless carriage" as cars were zooming up the block. I imagined a military recruiting commercial: "Be all you can be. Enlist and help us defeat the Confederate States of ." I imagined commercials for typewriters and dial phones.
I also imagined my own commercial, many hours early, but better than almost three hours late: vote next year in April! Vote "yes" or vote "no," but please, VOTE!
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