How my faith affects my school board service
I believe you have the right to know what motivates me and how I think. I will start to explain that here. This is not an attempt to convince you or convert you. But I don't know how you will understand where I am coming from without this explanation.
I believe (as most Christians do) that God created the universe, and each person in it. I further believe God did this out of love for us. Therefor (I am skipping a lot of steps here) I believe God created the world, and still works in it, to make sure every one will always have access to a way to meet their needs.
To put it another way, I believe that all persons "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I am proud to be a citizen of a country founded on this idea.
I am aware that America has been inexcusably slow to fulfill this promise made in its Declaration of Independence. Our national hypocrisy -- saying we believe all are created equal, and are equally endowed with unalienable rights, while enforcing slavery and the slaughter of native Americans at the time, and still struggling to live up to our stated ideals -- is such a vast wrong it's hard to put into words.
But it does not need to continue. I believe the loving God who created each of us also supplied the resources we need to fix what's wrong. The world abounds in resources. Polio -- a vast scourge still killing and crippling children when I was a child -- came with the key thing we needed to eliminate it in my lifetime, which turned out to be the virus itself. Jonas Salk used the virus to make a vaccine which we've used to essentially eradicate polio.
The same is true for our schools. Whatever is keeping our schools from meeting the needs of every one of our kids, there is a way to fix it. The resources are available.
One more point: if it were easy to find and use the resources we need to create schools that meet the needs of every child, we'd have done it already. So far we haven't found and/or applied the resources well enough to meet our goals. But, again, there is a resource for that: our disagreements.
I believe God designed us for disagreement. We are each given different skills and talents. We are each born into different families, cultures, and environments. And we have different life experiences. This gives each one of us a unique perspective on reality, which means none of us can know all the truth until we have tapped into what all of us bring to the table. As the Quakers say, "there is that of God in every person", so when we encounter people with different views, we should listen for that of God in what they say so we can improve our own understanding of the world.
So my faith shows up in two ways in my Board work (I hope!):
1. Every child is equally precious, and has an equal right to "life, liberty, and happiness" regardless of their birth circumstances. Public schools are crucial to keeping the American promise, because good education is essential to thrive in the modern economy. My equity work has NOTHING to do with Critical Race Theory (ask me if you want to hear more about this), or Antifa, or even Black Lives Matter. It flows directly from the Declaration of Independence, through the hope in my faith that God has already provided all we need to make the American promise true for every child, no matter their race, ethnicity, or economic status.
2. Since none of us knows everything we need to know, and for all of us some of what we "know" is wrong, diversity of opinions and backgrounds on the school board is absolutely critical. I have said several times in public board meetings that the greater ideological and cultural diversity the board has begun to enjoy better equips it to do the work we need. Diversity of ideology and background is perhaps the MOST critical resource God has built into human society, the key to making it possible for us to provide every child with wonderful schools attuned to giving each child a start on a life full of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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I believe (as most Christians do) that God created the universe, and each person in it. I further believe God did this out of love for us. Therefor (I am skipping a lot of steps here) I believe God created the world, and still works in it, to make sure every one will always have access to a way to meet their needs.
To put it another way, I believe that all persons "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I am proud to be a citizen of a country founded on this idea.
I am aware that America has been inexcusably slow to fulfill this promise made in its Declaration of Independence. Our national hypocrisy -- saying we believe all are created equal, and are equally endowed with unalienable rights, while enforcing slavery and the slaughter of native Americans at the time, and still struggling to live up to our stated ideals -- is such a vast wrong it's hard to put into words.
But it does not need to continue. I believe the loving God who created each of us also supplied the resources we need to fix what's wrong. The world abounds in resources. Polio -- a vast scourge still killing and crippling children when I was a child -- came with the key thing we needed to eliminate it in my lifetime, which turned out to be the virus itself. Jonas Salk used the virus to make a vaccine which we've used to essentially eradicate polio.
The same is true for our schools. Whatever is keeping our schools from meeting the needs of every one of our kids, there is a way to fix it. The resources are available.
One more point: if it were easy to find and use the resources we need to create schools that meet the needs of every child, we'd have done it already. So far we haven't found and/or applied the resources well enough to meet our goals. But, again, there is a resource for that: our disagreements.
I believe God designed us for disagreement. We are each given different skills and talents. We are each born into different families, cultures, and environments. And we have different life experiences. This gives each one of us a unique perspective on reality, which means none of us can know all the truth until we have tapped into what all of us bring to the table. As the Quakers say, "there is that of God in every person", so when we encounter people with different views, we should listen for that of God in what they say so we can improve our own understanding of the world.
So my faith shows up in two ways in my Board work (I hope!):
1. Every child is equally precious, and has an equal right to "life, liberty, and happiness" regardless of their birth circumstances. Public schools are crucial to keeping the American promise, because good education is essential to thrive in the modern economy. My equity work has NOTHING to do with Critical Race Theory (ask me if you want to hear more about this), or Antifa, or even Black Lives Matter. It flows directly from the Declaration of Independence, through the hope in my faith that God has already provided all we need to make the American promise true for every child, no matter their race, ethnicity, or economic status.
2. Since none of us knows everything we need to know, and for all of us some of what we "know" is wrong, diversity of opinions and backgrounds on the school board is absolutely critical. I have said several times in public board meetings that the greater ideological and cultural diversity the board has begun to enjoy better equips it to do the work we need. Diversity of ideology and background is perhaps the MOST critical resource God has built into human society, the key to making it possible for us to provide every child with wonderful schools attuned to giving each child a start on a life full of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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