Years ago when I was on our K-8 school board we reached the point in the year when we had to construct the next year’s budget. Ours was a small rural community, and we were facing some large bills we needed to absorb. We knew just to tread water on services and staff we’d need a fairly significant tax increase.
So we decided to pull the oldest trick in the book for school boards -- we put out word that without a big tax increase, we’d cut all funding for sports and arts clubs, and institute a “pay to play” program. This was guaranteed to bring out lots of voters willing to support a tax increase, because the sports program is what many in our community value most.
We had a collegial small board of five members -- two of us were clearly progressives, two were clearly conservative, and the chair seemed most independent (though I found out later she was a registered Democrat). I agreed to the plan to institute pay to play, as long as we set aside a small amount of money for a scholarship fund to ensure needy kids whose parents couldn’t pay for sports or arts could still participate.
One of the board members became irate -- the only time I saw true anger at a board meeting. “What you are talking about is SOCIALISM!” she said. “It is the PARENTS’ responsibility to make sure their kids can be in sports or arts. If they can’t, well then maybe they should make better LIFE CHOICES. What’s next -- are we supposed to feed and clothe them?”
My immediate thought was “Well, yeah! We are all responsible for the children in our community.” But instead, I cited research that showed how participation in extracurricular activities was one of the most significant determinants of future success for children -- emotionally, physically, socially, and financially. We as a society could pay now, or pay far more later. She wasn’t swayed. My motion did pass 3-2, and the threat of losing extracurricular activities ensured the tax increase passed anyway so we never had to implement pay to play.
I have thought of that board meeting often in the past two weeks as I look at the horrors of the detention centers with parents and children being separated. Yes, there’s definitely a lot of racists who support this policy. But there is also a deep-seated mean-spiritedness I never fully understood until that school board meeting many years ago.
The modern conservative mom loves HER children. The modern conservative dad loves HIS children. And they believe all the good in those kids and the good lives they have come from the good choices they have made -- their upstanding character and moral fiber. Kids in poverty who have few opportunities -- well, it’s all because of the poor choices their parents made. There is no belief that “there but for the grace of god go I, and my children with me.” There is no room for facts that show enormous numbers of good people find themselves in terrible life and death situations, through no fault of their own.
I know just how that school board member would respond today to the immigrant child ripped from her mom’s breast. “Too bad, but that mom made a poor choice to seek asylum over the border. It’s not my responsibility or any American’s problem what happens to that kid.” I can’t understand that selfishness or callousness, but I’ve seen it. If you can’t even care about the kids in poverty you see every day at your little community school, you certainly won’t care about the children of color at a detention center thousands of miles away.
But then again, I’m only guessing what that school board member would believe today. Years after that heated school board encounter, her only daughter was in college many miles from home. She fell ill with severe stomach pain. She went to an overcrowded inner city emergency room, waited hours, and was told she had the flu. She was sent home. She returned a couple days later in even more pain. Waited hours again, was taken in for surgery, and died from a burst appendix on the operating table. I can’t imagine the sorrow in that woman’s home on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and every holiday since her daughter’s death. Bad things happen to good people all the time. Nothing insulates any of us from that. And the less we invest in good healthcare for all, good public schools, and the needs of all children, the less insulated any of us will be.
What is happening to these children in detention camps will scar them for the rest of their lives. It will stain our country forever. Call your congressperson. Write. March. This has to stop now. Because it’s going to take a tsunami of backlash from progressives to stop this. The conservatives truly think the only people responsible for those kids are their poor parents in cells and shackles.