Haters Gonna Hate

I chuckled looking at the computer screen, nearly choking on my first cup of coffee.  Was that the best they could do? This week our town held its annual budget vote.  In our tiny New England town, the residents have to approve the spending plan each and every year at the polls.  It’s called an [...]

How Did This Happen?

Bizarre. There are days that I can’t believe this is my life…today feels like one of them.  I am killing time before my morning PTO meeting at the middle school.  I’m going there as a member of the “Executive Board” which sounds impressive but basically means that I’ve branded myself as a sucker that can [...]

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

“You need to come to the school and pick him up,” said the voice of my son’s special education teacher on the phone. We’d been riding a positive wave of good news as far as Michael had been concerned.  His last conference had brought me to tears; he was working on grade level, in the [...]

After the Hurricane

We made it through the hurricane, though it was an interesting time for us.  The winds started around midnight and by three in the morning, they were howling and rain was falling in sheets and sideways from the sky.  I finally got out of the bed at five thirty, tired of listening to it and [...]

Lock, Stock and Veiled Threats

I stared at the second page of our local paper in disbelief.  There it was, my name, my full name.  Not mentioned in an article about how the four of us had gone to an information session to learn how to be a good board of education member, or how we’d met with the chair [...]

Philosophical Differences

“What the heck is this?” I said, handing over our town’s local paper to the person sitting next to me. We were at our First Selectman’s home on a Saturday morning in April.  He’d invited my group of education advocates over plus a few of his political allies in town to discuss the budget defeat [...]

What’s Wrong?

It was January 2.  I was sitting on the conference room at our Board of Education, listening to our superintendent talk about the school budget. It was a Parents’ Council meeting.  Several representatives from each schools’ PTO came to listen to the district wide news, what each school’s group was doing, from elementary onto the [...]

Finding the Right Fit

I sighed as I listened to the speaker on the other end of the phone line.  ”Really?  He’s going to switch special education teachers for the third time in three years?” It was a week before the close of Michael’s first grade year.  It had not been a stellar year, by any account, from the [...]

The Taste of Victory

“I can’t fucking believe it!” were the words of our illustrious First Selectman on the night of the second budget vote in April, 2008. We were standing in the small 1970s era hallway that led to the Town Clerk’s office on the night of the vote.  Those of us who had spent the last two [...]

Moving Forward

I walked into the coffee shop that Saturday morning in April and was surprised to find so many people waiting there for me. It was the weekend after our first failed budget attempt, and our First Selectman (what our tiny little town called the person who acted as its mayor) had offered to meet a [...]