Less Pavement, More Cows: Notes from a town meeting (and why local politics stink)

This week I attended my first town meeting in a small New England town. And boy howdy, nothing is a better argument against democracy than democracy.

Despite the fun characters I’ll tell you about in a minute, I’m still hopeful for a government by the people (as long as I don’t have to listen to the people) but next time someone tells me New Englanders are taciturn and reserved, I’m going to laugh at them.

Cows, Pavement, and Provincialism

Provincialism, noun, “narrowness of mind, ignorance, or the like, considered as resulting from lack of exposure to cultural or intellectual activity.” If brevity is the soul of wit, this would cover the three hours I managed before I finally left.

I’m not entirely surprised by this. My first experience with New England provincialism was when a student compared the Boston Marathon bombing to September 11th. I mean, if the universe of cases is things that go boom and scare us, sure. But in all other ways: what?!

Still, picture it: small town, 7:30 pm, with over 30 Articles to approve. A very nice gentleman stands up in front of the town hall meeting to wax poetic about the cows of his youth and complain that there’s too much pavement in our town. Someone moves to call the question and curtail more waxing on and off. It goes on like this for 90 minutes. We finally get to Article 9, which is approved. Yay!

Nine pm. We finally get to Article 10, and they decide to take each of the 140+ budget line items and do them in small batches. It was like watching a slow motion trainwreck, creeping up to items 10-18 and then each department wants to tell us how great a job they did. Then it’s items 47-96, and then it’s 97-100, and so on. Some are voice votes, some we use the clickers (apparently, until very recently they used paper ballots…every time? How?).

Finally, we140 (104? I think I blocked it out): an increase in the school budget. And this, dear reader, is where the magic happens.

Local Politics are Crap-tastic

I learned some great terms working for the military: SNAFU, Cluster-fuck/Charlie Foxtrot, craptacular, FUBAR, fart sack, and words Marines use that I’m not sure how to spell or if it’s legal to say out loud.

Short of fart sack, all of these apply to local politics. (Though if you want to speak on that, I’ll pass you the mic and hear your argument.)

While discussing the school budget, I learned something cool: the town finance committee and school committee hate each other. So, instead of hearing the arguments from either side about the increase in our school budget here’s what happened:

Finance Guy: We had the authority to do the budget. The school committee is lying to you and can’t be trusted. It will raise your taxes by 7%! (Cue panic, hair on fire pleas from the locals.)

School Committee Guy: That’s not true, we have the authority, and we know what we’re talking about, trust us. (Cue a bunch of supporters coming up and talking about how great kids are.)

This goes on for like an hour and a half. Part way through, I didn’t even care which side won as long as they’d shut up and let me go home.

What we got: two committee members trying to get the last word so we knew which was one better, a sense that neither group could be trusted giving us actual information, a clear “us” (Finance committee/townies) and “them” (School committee/new people) breakdown, a moving speech by a Marine, and a genuinely sore ass from sitting in those seats.

What we did not get: a clear answer on how much this would raise our taxes, a breakdown of why (aside from inflation) the school was asking for so much more money, a sense that we could trust either of the groups that was talking to us, and any level of confidence in the town committees to function like grownups when faced with pushback.

Oh, we also didn’t get the money, so the town that I moved to for the amazing schools might be a lot less amazing next year. That’s okay, though. I like low property rates, higher crime, tween and teenage drug use, more violence and disciplinary problems in schools, and a higher drop out rate.

Not.

School Funding is a Security Issue

The reality is this: school funding isn’t just about some liberal hippie SEL (social and emotional learning), left-wing plot to indoctrinate kids. (Again, if we could indoctrinate them, it would be to go to the bathroom before class, follow the direction, have handwriting we could read, and bring us snacks.)

So many of the people who stood up to speak (admittedly, I wasn’t one of them), raised kids before the era of school shootings. They have no idea what it’s like to think “better not argue with the kid before she gets on the bus in case this is the last time I see her.”

It sounds dramatic, but it’s the post-Columbine world. Yet schools across the US are constantly underfunded by local, state, and federal governments. We ignore the reality that students who feel connected to their schools don’t go shooting them up. Yes, music classes increase math scores, health classes decrease youth suicides and (thank GOD!) teach them to wear deodorant, art classes lower drop out rates, and media literacy decreases everything from bullying and eating disorders to sexual assault and suicide. But it’s more than just academic.

Kids start drinking as young as 11 and start using drugs as young as 14. The younger they are when they start, the harder it is to stop (mostly for neurochemical and brain development reasons). Having adults who care at school and home can take the edge off these statistics. We can’t guarantee every kid had good parents, but we can do a lot to make sure they have good teachers.

When I was 12, I was surrounded by drugs. I ran away from home. I didn’t drop out of school because I had teachers who cared about me. My little sister is about to be put in jail again, she lost custody of her kids, and she’s been drinking and doing drugs on and off since she was at least 13. Adults in your life who care about you make a lifelong difference.   

School Violence is a Community Issue

We don’t need to get into Second Amendment fights to decrease violence in schools, there are lots of tools at our disposal already: people. I didn’t choose our school for its good test scores. I chose it because those test scores and class sizes indicate a level of community I wanted for my kids. As someone who has gone into the school for different programs, I have seen the effect of the adults who have the time to care about all the students in the building.

The last time I was at the school for a meeting this happened: A young kid having a bad day and not self-regulating comes in and shouts at the principal. The principal has time to deal with it, the teacher had a small enough class size to see the kid spiraling before anything bad happened, the principal is able to take the kid aside, calm him down, and let him wait a few minutes before returning to class.

Think about this. It’s so hard to be a kid. You don’t get to control anything in your life, you’re stuffed in school, and adults are always telling you what to do. Grownups decide if you get art or music or recess. If you’re a poor academic student but theatre or shop is what keeps you from dropping out, you’re seen as a screw up for dropping out when they cancel those classes.  

If you express resistance to any of the bs, you get into trouble. But this kid was able to express his frustrations, the principal was able to take the time to model a healthy male role model who did not yell back, and he both validated the kid’s emotions and reinforced helping him develop the tools to control himself better next time. A+! 4.0!

If that child had not been in a small class, if that principal had not had time to build a relationship with that student, or if that student had been referred to detention rather than care, this situation would have been different now and it would have been very different three or four years from now.

Most school shootings are intended to be suicides. We lower the risk of school violence and suicide by having the time and space to be really in touch with students. In our school every child has an adult who can look them in the eye every day and ask them how they are doing. I wish every school had that. The city near ours is about to layoff around 80 teachers, which interestingly correlates with a lot of money it’s paying out for police lawsuits. What is going to happen to those students? Do you really think they’re going to have it better?

Observation

All in all, as a social scientist, town meeting was an interesting moment. Before I lost all feeling in my right side from the chair, I was taking some interesting notes.

The hard truth is that with misinformation at home and disinformation from enemies foreign and domestic being such clear and present threat to the country, schools are more important than ever. In an increasingly technologically-mediated social sphere, meeting your neighbors is important.

I don’t fault people who can’t pay more in taxes. Whatever Biden says, the economy is rough for a lot of us, and despite Massachusetts’ millionaire’s tax that was supposed to trickle down to education, the state forgets that anyone west of Highway 495 exists, so we’re kind of on our own.

People have reason to vote for and against the school budget, but watching the local pissing match and the competing committee arrogance run away with the meeting is disingenuous to the students and taxpayers.

So despite pavement guy and school committee guy and finance guy, I’m suspiciously optimistic this week. But in the meantime, I’m left thinking about Churchill: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms.”