Posted 11:26 AM by Susan Darst Williams

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ OF PARENTAL ACTIVISM

Good Election Day news for fiscal responsibility in education comes from Santa Cruz, Calif. It’s even better than southeast Nebraska’s good-news story, that voters put in place a fiscally-conservative school board majority in Educational Service Unit #6.

In Santa Cruz, not one, not two, but THREE fiscally-conservative school board members were elected. They replace incumbents who had apparently driven the Scotts Valley Schools into a fiscal crisis. It had reached the point where parents were being asked to donate $365 per child just to make ends meet. But fiscal conservatives contended the real problem was voracious overspending for frills in the district.

Financial management was the dominant theme of the school-board race, after a $1 million deficit in the tiny, four-school district resulted in county action appointing a fiscal adviser with veto power over school purchasing decisions.

What’s exciting and instructive is that concerned citizens got organized, put up good candidates, created a website, put on a voters’ forum, and swept all three into office -- kind of like the cavalry.

Read more about them on www.ScottsValleyParents.org

Challenge: why couldn’t parents and taxpayers in ALL Nebraska school districts do this same thing?

Or am I . . . California dreamin’?