I’ve been thinking about how to answer the question posed by the League of Woman voters to Kettering Board of Education candidates. The question reads: “What are the biggest challenges facing the Kettering School system and what plans should the board be making to address those challenges in a proactive way?”

This is a great question and, since my answer will be printed in the DDN and may be the only words from me some voters might hear, my answer should reflect my general campaign message. But, the tough part is, that according to the League rules, I need to limit my answer to 75 words. Wow. The challenge of brevity.

The deadline is a couple of weeks away, so I’ll probably go through several versions before I submit my final answer. I’m wondering if I’ve sufficiently addressed that last part of the question — “what plans should the board be making to address those challenges in a proactive way?” — but, here is what I have so far:

“Public education needs transformation. To achieve 21st century quality, we must stop simply replicating the present system. Authentic change is rare, because it is not easy. It requires leadership and strong public support. The biggest challenge for the Kettering School Board is to inspire and empower teachers and citizens to work together to define system excellence and to create a plan for long-term transformation that will result in a great future for public education in Kettering.”

I am trying to build on ideas I wrote about in this post: “What Is The Purpose, The Aim Of Public Education?” — Every School Board Candidate Should Answer”

I wrote, “A good understanding of aim / purpose is crucial in order to make valid planning about the future. It is impossible to make good judgments about the future without a guiding aim / purpose with which to evaluate those judgments. The aim for public education has become lost in the blizzard of state tests that has confused the whole question of school purpose. I write about it in this post: A Great Question: How Can We Tell If a School Is Excellent?”

Robert Reich says that the coming congressional debate on health care promises to be fierce and that President Obama must give strong leadership. “In order to get anything meaningful through this session of Congress,” Reich syas, “the President will have to give congressional Democrats far more leadership and more cover.”

Reich says Obama will, “need to twist arms, cajole, force recalcitrant members to join him, threaten retribution if they don’t come along,” and must stand firm and communicate these three principles:

1. I will not stand for a bill that leaves millions of Americans without health care. It’s vitally important to cover all Americans, not only for their and their childrens’ sakes and not only because it’s a moral imperitive, but because doing so will be good for all of us.
2. The only way to cover all Americans without causing deficits to rise is to require that the wealthiest Americans pay a bit extra. The wealthy can afford to make sure all Americans are healthy. The top 1 percent of earners now take home 23 percent of total national income, the highest percentage since 1928. Their tax burden is not excessive. Even as income and wealth have become more concentrated than at any time in the past 80 years, those at the top are now taxed at lower rates than rich Americans have been taxed since before the start of World War II.
3. Finally, I want a true public insurance option — not a “cooperative,” and not something that’s triggered if certain goals aren’t met. A public option is critical for lowering health-care costs. Today, private insurers don’t face enough competition to guarantee low prices and high service. In 36 states, three or fewer insurers account for 65 percent of the insurance market. A public insurance option would also have the scale and authority needed to negotiate low drug prices and low prices from medical providers.