I recently made a suggestion to my niece that she tackle this question as a project in her graduate school class:  “What is the best future for public education and how can this future be accomplished?” I also sent my niece a link to my little on-line book — Public Education In 2030 — that organizes selected articles I wrote over the last ten years that together show some of my thoughts about how this important question should be answered.

When I unsuccessfully sought election to the Kettering Board of Education, seven years ago, for the League of Women Voters Voter Guide, I wrote, “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.”

After failing to be elected to the school board, I resolved I would not try again for election until I could present Kettering voters with a specific plan that would address the challenge I indicated in my response to the LWV. I determined to write a plan called “Kettering Public Education In The Year 2022: How Do We Get To A Great Future?”  (I later changed the date to 2030.) This was to be a solitary effort. As it turns out, I’ve done little to work on this project and my note to my niece underlined to me of how lazy I’ve been. I feel convicted that I need to honor my promise to myself and follow through with what my heart and head tells me to do about this matter.

Kettering is prosperous and stable, with many civic minded citizens. It is known for its active volunteer program and for its consistent and generous support of its local schools. For many reasons it would be an ideal community to show leadership in creating a new model of public education. These are the six steps I’m proposing:

1. Make a detailed analysis of the current system of public education in Kettering in terms of program and budget. Identify the aim of the system and explain how resources are used to accomplish that aim.
2. Make predictions of the future state of the system, based on established trends in the system.
3. Make a detailed analysis how technology can be expected to change in the next ten and twenty years; make an analysis of how this change in technology will impact economic opportunities, and how this technology will impact systems of education.
4. Determine what the aim of the system should be to best meet the challenges of the future.
5. Propose a system structure that will most effectively use resources to accomplish the aim of the system.
6. Outline a ten year process for changing the current system into the transformed system.

To complete these six steps with convincing competence is a huge task. Rather than making this a solitary effort, my thinking now is that the best way to proceed is to invite the public to help. My goal is to outline a ten week study — meeting once each week, starting in January — that would involve presentations by experts who have experience and research to share in an effort to complete these six steps. These study sessions would be posted on the internet and there would be structured an online discussion / forum open to participants who are part of the study.

To finance the participation of experts and researchers needed to make this study a success will require a budget. I’m thinking that if I could prepare a proposal in sufficient detail, showing who the teachers in this study would be, how research on these questions would be conducted — and the financing that would be required — the project could get the needed financial support via a crowdsourcing web-site like Kick-starter or Indiegogo. This crowdsourcing effort would be the beginning of bringing together a core group of citizens who support investigating the question: “What is the best future for public education and how can this future be accomplished?”

My experience as a teacher left me with a compelling desire to help transform the current system of public education to something much better. Here at age 68, I’m impressed more and more that if I’m going to make the effort, it is now or never. My goal: create a ten week study and design a crowdsourcing pitch to fund the study. Making these thoughts public today is my way of pushing myself .

Joe Colvin recently responded to a post now over two years old, asking why the local Democratic party fails election after election to elect Democrats to the statehouse. 

Joe, I see two big obstacles that block Democrats from being elected to the statehouse. I’ll focus on the 41st Ohio House District in Kettering where I live. The first obstacle is lack of a Democratic party infrastructure. The second big obstacle is lack of a democracy infrastructure.

The Democratic party in the 41 OHD, has failed to build an infrastructure. Most precincts in the 41 OHD do not have a Democratic precinct leader and the Democratic ward leaders and precinct leaders who are in place in the 41 OHD are generally inactive. Almost all the responsibility of funding, running and organizing a campaign is placed on the candidate. This is a huge and exhausting challenge that discourages potential candidates from making an effort. The excellent Democratic candidates that have emerged — for example, Steve Byington in 2002, and Caroline Gentry in 2012 — always get a shellacking (Caroline got the most votes of any D in 41 OHD in recent memory with 40.45% of the vote.) As a party, we have not established the infrastructure that could possible encourage continued effort by these or other qualified candidates. I did a statistical study of the 41st Ohio House District. There are over 7000 Democrats who regularly vote in the Democratic primary in the 41 OHD. (See herefor more data about 41 OHD) The question is, what needs to happen to bring these Democrats together into a meaningful community that can find and support good candidates?

The second big obstacle to sending Democrats to the statehouse — lack of a democracy infrastructure — became obvious to me when in 2009, I decided to seek election to the Kettering Board of Education. For this nonpartisan position, again, I discovered the burden of communicating with voters is fully on the candidate. The League of Women Voters organized one poorly attended meeting that was truly worthless. There was no Kettering Town Hall, no established or traditional venue where interested citizens could easily dialogue with school board candidates — no on-line forum, etc. It is all up to the candidate to fund and organize any communication with the voting public.

In 2012, I organized a community debate between the candidates for the 41st OHD between Democrat Caroline Gentry and Republican Jim Butler. It was scheduled to happen at Kettering High School immediately after school dismissal. There was almost zero interest by high school teachers, including social study teachers, to attend or to encourage their students to attend. There was only a small handful of community members. There seems no tradition or established expectation of democracy in Kettering, no democracy infrastructure, that brings citizens together in a nonpartisan setting to discuss issues and candidates. This lack of a democracy infrastructure, this lack of public expectation or demand for a democracy infrastructure that I experienced in Kettering is repeated throughout the county. This is a huge obstacle.

You write, “What has to get done? We need new life blood!” I agree. But there is no easy answer. To address these two obstacles will require a lot of sustained effort by a core group of concerned citizens. It will require Democrats to work not only to build their party but to work in nonpartisan efforts to build local democracy and local community.