☀️Once in a Lifetime Sun

Friday, August 16 - 2024

Aug 16, 2024

Well, hello, Marysville! Long time, no write. In fact, it’s been twenty-two weeks since you last saw a Sun. Between then and now the increased number of traffic-circles installed around town almost provoked gumption enough to raise a community protest, but perhaps that will have to annoy us another time. For today, there’s other work to propose. But it’s nice to see you, and all of us here at the Sun hope you are well.

☀️Changing the Default of the Marysville School District

We are staring at a once in a lifetime opportunity. Sure, the current situation looks as dead as my mid-August grass, but the future could be better than ever before.

Let the Marysville School District crash.

Let us build better schools for all the families in our city.

Imagine what a destination Marysville could be then.

Last week the Office of the Washington State Auditor reported that Marysville schools do not have enough money. Most of the numbers in the 80-plus page report are not good. Instead of the 60 days worth of operating expenses expected to be in the bank, “As of June 2024, the District reports the number of days of operating expenditures is negative 11.6 days.” That will fly as uneventfully as a 737 Max 9 screwed together by a pack of DEI hires.

It's not like we've been doing well. For years the MSD has had higher than county average expenses per student and lower than county average test results. Money is the presenting problem (what’s new under the sun?), but there's no reason to believe throwing more financial resources at a broken system will fix it. Though school leaders keep including the failed levy in their pleas, Marysville citizens voted against a new school levy twice. We did it on purpose even.

A year ago the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction “placed [the MSD] in binding conditions...allowing the agency and the local educational service district to assist.” Yeah, I “bind you” to “allow me” is nicespeak for takeover.

In 2007 the state assisted and “dissolved” the Vader School District, about two and half hours south of Marysville, because it couldn’t pay its debts. Students were sent to another nearby district. That’s just asking the rats to go to a different part of the sinking ship.

The OSPI is the Taylor Swift of education: "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me." (I don’t want to miss the opportunity to throw the Federal Department of Education under the school bus as well, feel free to desire its dissolution as much or more.) When higher levels of government add their bad policy and incompetence to lower level problems it doesn’t work like English grammar, by which I mean, a double-negative doesn’t produce a positive force.

What if we collectively said to OSPI, "Stick it." What if we rejected state money and the mandates that come with it?

But in the system as is, local school leaders want their cake and for the state to pay for it. In a “Call to Action” email sent by the Acting President of the MSD on August 8, Connor Krebbs wrote, “While the district understands we have work to do and are committed to taking the necessary actions to get us to a healthy place, I would encourage the state to look inward and determine whether or not its school funding decisions are student-focused.” Whose inwards are to blame?

It's a game of chicken, with a lot more squawking. Is the state really going to send 9700 students to neighboring districts? Is the MSD really trying to please the ones (who can give them money) they criticize as the problem (for not giving them money)?

How about NO to all that.

Let it collapse, all the way down. Take the educational work and authority out of the bureaucrats' hands and back into the parents' where it has belonged all along.

Here's a proposed plan:

Pay the debts. Make arrangements to fulfill the binding agreements already in place and make no new commitments.
Find a lawyer. We’ll need him to navigate how to lawfully end current teacher and administrative contracts. The teachers’ union will be big mad. Exactly. So will the state. Yes. This could be someone’s full time job for a while.
Create a new school committee. This committee should begin drafting its own list of educational objectives/policies as well as begin searching for a new superintendent or, even better, for multiple principals (though principles works, too). Let them begin the good and necessary work of rallying parents to a better future.
Begin networking with private businesses and persons. We need to purchase buildings and start planning how to fix and maintain them. We can work with local government, but we can’t depend on them.
Stop paying the 30% part of property taxes that go to the school system. We’re going to need our own money to pay to educate our own kids. See also number 2 above.

One other thing, and this is non-negotiable. These schools need, and need to recognize, a transcendent standard of truth, and that is not the state. If there is no truth, then we have no need for school; eat, drink, and for let Matt transition to Mary. If there is truth, then it isn't based on our experiences or experiments, let alone our emotions. Truth, along with goodness and beauty, are givens. And the one who gives them is God.

The heavens proclaim His handiwork, the world and all that is in it is His. 2+2=4 is right and unchangeable because God said. God also sent His Son to reveal Himself, and to provide a sacrifice for our real problem: rebellion against Him. Our sin includes the rebellion of acting like we can get along without Him. The basis of all education, in every subject, is that God exists and expects our worship. There is no neutrality. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

This foundation is necessary, even though we can provide schooling for those that do not yet see everything as from-through-and-to Him (or submit to Him). We would refer to these as evangelism schools, not because every class begins with rehearsing the Romans Road, but because every lesson depends on and points to the biggest lesson, which is that we are God’s image-bearers and the good life only comes from Him.

So let’s change the narrative, ask different questions, change the default from struggling to pay back loans to depending on the Lord. Let’s take true local action and make Marysville a destination. Tell your friends. This is a once in a lifetime shot.