Cortney Stewart Gets It! Read why

Stewart: “The people elected to these seats reflect what we value in our greatest investment for the future — our children.”

This past Sunday Cortney Stewart a 2003 graduate of Lecanto High School wrote and outstanding column in the Citrus County Chronicle that I believe is important to read. Stewart has bachelor’s degrees in political science and international affairs, a master’s degree in intercultural studies and is beginning her doctoral studies in international conflict management this year. She spent the last two years teaching and training students, teachers and government officials in Baghdad, Iraq.

Here are some excepts

“Elections can bring out the best about America. By their very nature, they remind us and the world our democracy is alive (and potentially well). It brings to the forefront our civic duty and it causes us, even if just for a moment, to consider what it takes to maintain what we have; it forces us to think about where we have come from and where we, as a nation, want to go.“

Stewart goes on to say…

“More frequently, however, elections bring out the worst about us. Primaries are full of backbiting and hits below the belt. Primary candidates spend an inexcusable amount of time trashing colleagues from their own party and very little time talking about what their ideas for forward progress actually are. And then, in the blink of an eye, when our candidate loses the primary, we are expected to erase all the negative truths and untruths the mud slinging brought to light and throw our intellectual, emotional and monetary support behind the candidate we were just trained to despise; all for the good of the party, of course.”

…

“You might be surprised to know that, collectively, school board members make up the largest group of elected officials in the country. It makes sense, given every school district has a school board. Florida alone has 74 separate districts.“

…

“School board members set some education standards and enforce others. They act as the collective voice of our community’s schools. They are the visionaries for what we want for our local education system and they are maintenance keepers for a large organization that must be effective and efficient all the time. They must balance individual visions with the visions of the superintendent and their fellow board members while dealing with high-level administrative conflict, managing the collective bargaining network and overseeing a complicated budget with incredible constraints.“

Follow this link to read the entire column – http://www.chronicleonline.com/content/vote-school-board-vote-future

Comments Off on Cortney Stewart Gets It! Read why
Filed under: News & Updates