part one

From the beginning:

I live in the country, way out in the country, my nearest neighbor is about 800 feet from me. The deer and the antelope play. Well, no, we don’t have antelope. We do have foxes though! (I love foxes) (that’s totally irrelevant, but have you ever known me to worry about such trivialities as relevancy?)

One of my neighbors, who lives 1/2 mile up the road so she’s pretty close by, is 90 years old. I’ve mentioned her before. (Try to keep up) The farmer across the road from her checks on her every day and I try to stop in every few days too. He got elected to school board 4 years ago. At the time, my husband was working at the school. (Stick with me, this is relevant) He would often be checking on Joan when I was visiting her, so we would get to chatting about school stuff. He started bugging me to attend meetings and see for myself.

So I did. And between that and listening to my husband talk about the stuff that was being thrown out, wasted, trashed, I started to speak up.

My husband retired from Harley Davidson after 28 years. He had major surgery that year, spent a year recovering, and the next year watching MASH till I told him if he didn’t soon get a job, I’d shoot the TV. Or him. He found a part time job as a custodian at the school. He has health issues still, all of which were known to the school when he was hired, and as his health has worsened over the years, they have been aware of any physical limitations and accommodations needed. Because he had worked there for several years, eventually going full time, some things were verbally agreed to, and not put in writing – big mistake.

Do not trust an employer to stand by a verbal agreement. Never.

After several months of attending meetings and listening to the board members, I gathered my courage one night and spoke up. I said that they weren’t doing their job, they were elected as the “ABC’s” which stood for “accountability, budget and curriculum.” I said that I’d heard nothing about the budget, which was soon due, or about curriculum.

As time went on, I spoke up more often, about things like the roof leaking while we spent thousands of dollars on a “facility study” to tell us what needed to be fixed when any moron would know that if your roof is leaking, you should probably fix it. When the facilities manager asked for $60,000 for a brand new truck because it was desperately needed, according to him, because we were going to be buried in snow (we plowed twice last year) I let my friend know that we had previously outsourced plowing and that this guy, known to me as CueBall (for reasons) was lying when he said we hadn’t. When he vociferously denied that we had ever outsourced, I searched the old check registers for year back and found that indeed, we had, and brought that information to my friend. By then it was too late, the truck had been purchased, but I spoke at another meeting about what I had found and how long this research took, and stated that the board should have been the ones doing it instead of rubber stamping such a large purchase.

That put a target on the Bear’s back. They started nitpicking his job performance, calling him in on nothing and giving out no discipline. We knew it was retaliation, but we can’t prove it – as we’ve been told over and over. It all came to a head after the primary, when I secured a place on the ballot. The end result was that he was forced to retire. (We’re not through with this mess, so no details there)

After I spoke out the first time, questioning the state of the roofs and why we were finding it necessary to hire someone to do a “facilities study” to tell us to fix them, I was approached by a youngish woman who shall be known as Cathy Chaos (obviously not her real name). She represented a PAC that was looking for candidates. I agreed to meet with her, and brought my friend The Farmer. We were unsure, but decided to give this group a chance.

That was our first mistake.

We didn’t do the research we should have done on this group. I give myself some grace because I had no idea what I was doing, but the other two candidates should have known something was off. They offered to do the required paperwork, and help raise money. Yay, one less thing we have to do.

They called a meeting to introduce everyone and let us know what was happening and also to introduce the person they had chosen to run along with us. Mind you, there were 3 strong conservative Republicans running – so they chose a woman who is a transgender activist to be the fourth member of this group. Yes, you read that correctly, A transgender activist, in a town that is incredibly conservative, they thought this person would have a chance of being elected. Also, she’s a Democrat. (I suppose that went without saying)

That should have been our first red flag.. Actually, it was – but I didn’t act on my instincts. Again, I blame myself.

There were two policies up for debate at the first board meeting after our candidacies were announced. One of them dealt with bathrooms, the other with sports. Both of them were written by a far right law firm that specializes in this sort of thing, and would love to see a lawsuit reach the Supreme Court. The two guys who were up for re-election had already stated their opposition, only because of the terminology. It was a given that these policies would pass, it was 7 to 2 voting for them, and the guys both had explained their reasons for voting no.

The night before the vote, an outside group posted on Facebook that these policies would allow teachers and administrators to check a child’s genitals before allowing them to use the bathroom. This statement was totally untrue, nowhere in the policy was anything like this stated. I messaged the girl in charge of our group, aka CathyChaos, and demanded that this post be taken down. At this point, there were maybe 20 responses. She told me she hadn’t read it. I insisted it be removed. The next morning, it was still there, and now there were well over 200 responses. Again, I demanded that it be taken down, or at least that an explanation be posted saying that it was not true, that we were not the ones who were saying this, etc. She posted something but didn’t really refute the statements.

The meeting was ridiculous. The public comment period consisted of parents talking about how awful this was, the board president mentioned the Facebook post, one gentleman said he would never vote for anyone from our group.

I should have stood up then and agreed with him. The next day, I told the Farmer that I could be certain that this guy would run as a write-in candidate. Not only did he, and another guy, they ended up winning the election.

The primary was in May. PA allows school board candidates to cross file, on the premise (I believe) that school boards should be bi-partisan so it shouldn’t matter which party you’re from. (It matters) As you all know, I ended up winning on the Democrat side and getting trounced on the Republican by – you guessed it – the two write ins. After the primary, the PAC met to discuss strategy. I said, because no one was taking accountability, that we lost because of the Facebook debacle. I was told that I had lost votes because I spoke up about this truck, that the staff “Loves CueBall!” That pissed me off and made me laugh at the same time. (None of the staff can stand him)

As I had predicted, there were two write ins. Cathy Chaos and Turbo Tits wrote them off (see what I there?) as did one of the guys running for re-election. I was told “write ins never win.” (Surprise!) I was angry and they were indifferent.

I’ve never run for an office, not even in high school. But I had some ideas of what I thought we should do. Get endorsements from anyone with any political presence, get a website up and running for each of us, raise money, etc. To this day I don’t really know what the PAC did other than some postcards, knocking on doors, and putting out yard signs. And stirring up chaos.

That was all in May, the summer was pretty quiet. Things geared up in September. That will be part 2, this is quite long enough.