It's hardly extreme to consider outlawing or licensing pit bulls in a community that outlaws buying and selling of iguanas and ferrets. Just a thought.
It's interesting how long it took The List (as well as the larger community) to realize that the youngster wounded in last week's incident apparently lives day in day out in a drug house with all its attendant misery. In another week that child will be a student in some teacher's classroom, who knows, maybe writing the requisite "What I did on my summer vacation" piece. When you ponder the low areas of student achievement, are you thinking of how living in an environment like that is likely to affect a child's performance? If you were the teacher, how quick would you be to make a home visit to that home, pit bull and all? If you were the parent of one of this child's classmates, would you want your own child to visit that home? How likely is this child to be focused on mastering math and the finer points of the language when he is in the classroom? Just a few things to think about...
Someone asked on the list the other day if the school board job was worth the misery that goes along with it. My answer is YES. To be given a position where you have the power to improve the lives of young people in any measure is an awesome opportunity and responsibility to be entrusted with and - in my view - an extraordinary honor . Struggling to find and implement practices that increase the odds that children will reach their full potential is hard, overwhelming at times, but there is no work in this community that is more worth doing.
Little story: I grew up in Memphis and often still feel like an outsider in this community where so many people have lived all their lives. One night in 1991 I was running for school board and I was returning from a candidate's forum in far North Minneapolis, driving down a street I don't think I had ever been on before. I turned a corner and saw one of my lawn signs in the yard of someone I didn't know. I stopped at the curb and looked at the sign in the stranger's yard for a long time. And it struck me that whoever put that sign up in their yard trusted me enough to promote my candidacy. Someone that I didn't know was counting on me to do the right thing. Over the eight years I served that image of the sign in the stranger's yard came back to me many times. I never forgot that.
What a privilege. Godspeed to all those seeking positions of trust and service.
Ann Berget
Kingfield
