My candidacy is official!

My schedule permits me occasionally to bring my kids to school.  They go to two different schools, so it’s two stops each morning.  Two lines of cars in.  Two lines of cars to drop off.  Two lines of cars to turn left.  There is almost always a fender-bender of some description, especially near the highschool where the reasons behind normal traffic patterns have not yet been viscerally embraced by the newer drivers and someone will do something out of pattern (e.g. "stupid").

The other day, kids were brining in their donated "supplies".  The kid in front of us at the middle school unloaded a bale of paper towels.  My daughter was carrying two packages of handy-wipes.

The short-sightedness of is quite evident.  Politicians “win” by “keeping taxes low” which generally seems to mean – at least in terms of schools – to transfer as much of the cost as possible onto the families.  Kids don’t take the bus because there are so few busses that the routes are so long that the kids would be gone for nearly ten hours.  School budgets are in balance at least in part because supplies are seen as novelties and are supplied by the students.  No study halls to keep costs down.  Studying is for losers, anyway, I've heard.

And, through it all, maybe we have it right.  Maybe the long view – the one that says one bus carrying 40 children is more efficient than 40 cars - is really contrary to human nature.  That each student bringing a bale of supplies really does goes unnoticed.  Kids of single parent households can use the bus like a babysitter.  Learning to crash your car in front of the high school is safer than on the throughway. 

I’m going to run for office here in my town under a simple platform.  Low taxes, low services, low expectations, hope is a monetized commodity.  I think I’ll win.