This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, educated educators talking
education.
Now it's Monday, educated educators talking education, Busted Pencils fully-ledded education
talk.
The number eight, four, four, nine, six, seven, two, seven, eight, nine, yes, the Kansas City
Chiefs won the Super Bowl for all of you football people out there.
Johnny Lupinacci, did you win money or did you lose money?
Oh, Tim, I can't disclose that on this, but you know, I lost money earlier in the season
on my team, but I mean, I think I gained it all back.
I had had an early bet on the on the chiefs, like you maybe have mentioned in previous
shows, you, it's hard to not roll the dice with Andy Reed and Patrick Mahomes.
And so, you know, while I'm not a big fan, I think they did pretty good for me last night.
So.
Yeah.
Well, good.
So you knew where you should be and who you should support.
Yeah, watching the game, two minutes, you know, to go like that, you give him a home,
Mahomes the ball.
And that's it.
He will find a way to win, which was exciting, though.
I mean, there was a great loser too.
Yeah.
A lot of ways.
Well, over time.
And I'm still trying to figure out how we don't have Monday as a holiday yet in this country.
The month with the Monday after Super Bowl.
Oh, God.
I remember teaching in the classroom.
I mean, I popped into a couple of classrooms today and saw, you know, kids pretty tired,
teachers pretty tired.
And it's like, come on, can't we just have this be one of those Mondays?
Well, you know, it was like the Monday after Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania for the longest
time, which is deer hunting season, you know, nobody would come to school anyway.
They finally did make that a holiday, though, believe it or not, and more states.
So if you can have the opening day of deer season off, Johnny, I agree with you.
I think we should have the day after the Super Bowl off.
It just makes sense.
Oh, here we are.
Busted pencils.
So again, a four, four, nine, six, seven, two, seven, eight, nine, Monday night, if you're
just jumping in, though, and going, wait a minute, busted pencils tonight.
Six o'clock, really, how did that happen?
Hey, we've been telling you for the last two weeks.
It is busted pencils Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
And now for now on or from now on, six PM, six PM central every evening, adjust your
clock.
If you're eastern, if you're mountain, if you're Pacific, figure it out, six o'clock
those central time every night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
This is our new spot on Civic Media.
And this is really exciting.
It's been exciting that we've gone to five days a week.
And now we're in our new time slot, follow in the devil's advocates.
Really, Johnny, we are situated in a nice spot.
Well, now, you know, we don't have to wait an entire week because we always have such
exciting guests and really awesome stuff to talk to talk about with our listeners and
our callers.
So without any more due, Tim, why don't we introduce our guests, I mean, so I'll just
go right with you know, she's a Las Vegas native mother to two adult children and to 21
nieces and nephews, firm mom to two dogs and three cats.
She's a newcomer to the political arena.
She came in first of nine candidates for school board trustee or school board member during
the 2018 primary elections and defeated the establishment candidate in the general election.
During her four years as a school board member, she witnessed the questionable spending
of over $20 billion.
She had a front row seat to the complex power plays in November of 22, 2022.
She launched her podcast, unraveling education to expose covert operations happening within
the Clark County school district and empowered the community to fight back.
Welcome the busted pencils, Danielle Ford.
How are you, Danielle?
Thank you.
Thank you.
That was quite an introduction.
I am so happy to be here.
I've been following you guys for a while and when you reached out to be a guest, I was
like, yes.
When?
Well, when you said yes, we were like, yes, she said yes, it's one of those, you know.
Okay.
So Danielle, a little bit be just a background biography.
So you're no longer a school board member.
You're doing the podcast, unraveling education, and we'll talk about that.
But what brings you a mom into the arena to even want to be a school board member?
I mean, what's happening in Las Vegas?
Give us a little bit of the origin story.
What makes you wake up one day and say, I'm getting involved.
Well, I was involved with my kids in my kids school.
So I went to CCSC schools my entire life and I ended up leaving early, graduating with
my GED a year early.
So I technically drop out.
And I felt like this system failed me as a student in many ways.
When my kids got into CCSC, I was on the PTO with leading cup scouts.
I was asking about the budget, started a snack shack.
So for instance, I wanted to go to Whole Foods to partner with home kitchens and give
healthy options.
And it was like, no, we can't do that because when Apple is too many grams of sugar, but
the sour gummy worms of this money is okay.
And then it's like, well, who chooses the contracts?
How does this happen?
And then I learned how it's a school board that makes those decisions.
So I was like, oh, when does that happen?
Okay.
And it was pretty impulsive actually.
I was like, I think I can do this and I ended up, it was the biggest race at that time
of all school board seats with 10 people in the race.
And so most people thought I didn't have a chance and kind of ignored me until I human
first in the primary election.
So it's fair.
I mean, that part first, oh, my God, there's a whole other, you just brought up something
though, school lunches, the politics of school lunches, they're an apple and sugar gummy.
I know, man, there are so many things there.
So Danielle, in this sense, you're a mom, you're involved in the school and these questions
pop up as you just see them there.
And so this idea, like, how do I get involved?
Well, you go right to it though, you're like, well, I'm doing the PTO, I'm doing the
Cubscouts.
Yeah, let's just get on the school board and become a school trustee.
One thing I did not know, so when I enter the race, I didn't have any, I have no education
background.
I didn't have any political experience other than just like being interested in it and theory
conceptually wasn't involved in any political groups.
I'm a true nonpartisan, I don't like either party.
I learned during my election that people, they do not want newcomers.
It's like you're offending the status quo.
The good guys and the bad guys or whatever your opinions are.
Everybody has these groups that are already, like, have it figured out who's going to be
in the next seat.
And they have been prepping people and they've been looking for the last couple of years
if you might run.
And you basically, like, what you should do is join some committees and get some appointed
positions and join some caucuses and, like, be, start asking around, would I have support
from all the political groups?
If I were to run, I had no idea.
I didn't get any endorsements.
You know what I had?
Voters support.
I'd like to need.
Right.
Democracy in action, man.
Tim, this is my face.
Truly.
And the story to hear is, you know, we talk about it all the time, education is a matter
for all members of our community and in democracy, that's one of the beautiful things about
the way things are run is that your voice not only matters, but it counts.
And voters know that.
And that's an important thing about education is we have a stake in it.
And Danielle, thank you for throwing your hat in there and digging in and, you know,
and being part of that process.
It's a huge thing.
Yeah.
Hey, look at that.
Stephen from Green Bay, you're on the phone with Busted Pencil Stephen.
What's happening?
You're on with our guest, Danielle Ford.
Hey, Stephen.
First of all, I'd like to say, I think it's wonderful that you're on it, because when
I was seven, I could not listen to you.
I was getting ready to go to bed, but now I can listen to you on a daily basis, so that
is a good thing.
Love it.
Love it, man.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Was that being said, any time I hear a woman running for anything, whether it's school,
board, president, city council, whatever it is, I have to, you know, tip my hat to
them, because we definitely need more women in politics.
I know school board technically isn't politics as usual, but it still is politics running
for school board, and, you know, it's important who is on those in those seats, making decisions
for your children, but they can learn.
What the curriculum is, I was actually in high school.
I left the brick and mortar school, and I went to a virtual school, and it made me appreciate
the brick and mortar model so much more going to a virtual school, because all the things
I took for granted, like a teacher being there to help me, was no longer there.
And I just think school, the brick and mortar sense of going to a building and having someone
there to interact with is so very important for kids to have.
And so, you know, stuff going on right now where people are trying to get rid of that
and take funding away from that, when they say that they are taking money, not from us,
but they are taking money from our children's futures, and that cannot happen.
No, Steven, thank you, really appreciate Danielle, I mean, tell us what you, with Steven
there in the call, all those things that you learned, and is he striking something that
you're like, oh my god, Steven, if you only knew?
You know, I absolutely agree with Steven.
In fact, it's not necessarily about students, even everyone's like, it's about the kids,
of course, we love kids who want to take care of kids, of course, but it's about the future.
It's about future adults, it's about society.
And so, when people are trying to take tax dollars away for their kids right now, because
they want their kids to have whatever, that's not what the public money is for, it's to build
a society of humans, of adults that are going to be productive and happy and, you know,
make the future better.
So I think he's spot on, and that's a really big conversation and something to help people
understand is that it's about society as a whole, and not just about every individual
students.
I'd say the one thing, though, to Steven, and again, really appreciate your call, and
I'm glad that we moved to six so that you don't have to go to bed before, you know,
listen up.
I don't know if you're going to be able to go to sleep though, yeah, how's he going to
be able to sleep after Boston pencils though?
Now we're going to be causing his insomnia, but at this point, though, looking at, you
know, being politics, I would say that entering into school board races anywhere now across
America is your first step into politics.
In fact, we would, you know, I want to put it out there that it's such an effective way
to get involved in one of the most important investments we can all make in democracy,
in this civic process, it's our schools, I just want to put that out there, and I give
Steven a lot of props.
Thanks for calling Steven, but thanks for echoing and amplifying how important it is,
not only when people run for politics, but especially when we have women and their voices
represented strong and the most important, I, I, I thought on all the time, school boards,
the most important politics we have locally, and that trickles all the way up.
You know, I'm just going to say really quick, I kind of disagree.
It was all a female board, and I was like, we could use someone on here.
Okay.
Hey, you know what, though, think of that, though, Danielle, wait, we're going to have
to talk about that when we come back from the break all female board.
Wait a minute, okay, Steven, though, thank you for the call, our guest from the unraveling
education podcast, Danielle Ford, more when we get back.
Yeah, that's why you're thinking back there, meaning back for a reason to like watch,
who likes you to behind the scenes and whatnot.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And I'm just talking about, it's all we're talking about.
So if you're busting pencils right now on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, YouTube,
yes, you are looking at, you know, the faces of busted pencils and our great guest,
Danielle Ford from the unraveling podcast.
She was a school board member, school board trustee, as they say in Las Vegas, one of the
de top vote getter in 2018.
And Steven called in and gave big kudos because being a woman and jumping into politics and
Johnny was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, and Danielle, right before the break, though, you're like,
well, I gotta disagree a little bit.
So what about the dynamics of the school board you were on then?
Give us a little bit about that.
It was not without getting too much in the backstory because it is drama, but it was an
all female board and a male superintendent who I just did not get along with right out
of the gates.
And there was so many times, honestly, the entire four years.
I was labeled like caddy and dramatic and so many times I was like, I was a man saying
exactly what I just said, very straightforwardly pointing out what this dude is doing and
exactly how he, you know, is swindling taxpayers or whatever it is, they'd be like, wow,
okay, this is a leader.
This is a very well researched man, but because I'm a female, it's like, oh, she has it
out for him.
Oh, she doesn't like him.
And like, no, I literally just give you facts and you're all choosing to just follow
your biases or whatever your opinion is about me.
It doesn't matter.
So I run into a lot of that kind of stuff.
And there was so many times I was like, if there was a dude on this board, I would just
work through him.
I would like puppeteer him and I would be like, here's what I need you to say.
And then they'll listen to you, like even the women too, like the women on the board responded
well to the superintendent and any men that came in and told us what to do.
Strange.
And Johnny, yeah, look at it.
Yeah, that's fast.
Leadership and not only in politics, but, you know, all of us teachers listen to this.
We've had that similar experience in schools, especially in elementary ed where there are
less male presence in there.
And then we tend to fast track them to principal or constantly go down and be like, can you
handle this behavior problem or can you talk to this person about this?
It's like, we do gender in such a way that it, like Daniel reminds us, it's not always
just enough for the right thing to have all women in one space, right?
Well, there's, I argue, there's likely to be better ideas, but that's my bias for the
women in this world.
But that said, it doesn't make things perfect.
There's still a lot of work to do.
And the ways that we gender, especially give power to voice, can be a huge problem.
So both of those things got to be worked on at the same time.
But that's why I always want to aim for the diversity of your population.
So it's like 51% women, 49% men.
So really a split board would be actual like representative of the community.
Yeah.
Well, Daniel, let's, so Las Vegas, Clark County, you said, this is, you know, for anybody,
this is a huge school district.
I think I was reading here, fifth largest school district in, in the country when I joined
there was 320,000 students.
When I left, there was 300 students because that's how many the super internet ran out to
charter schools.
But it's another story.
Oh, oh, but I mean, that's huge.
So you're making, so I mean, back to, to Steven, to potentially recognize Stevens and,
in Green Bay, Wisconsin, they're usually doing more of the school districts dealing with
localities.
And so the idea moving into a different state, Nevada is where you're doing counties like
that.
And I see that across the country, you know, some places they do the little township.
And so you have a high school, AL and elementary school and a middle school.
And that's the quote, school district.
And then, but what you're talking about there too, that, that's an incredible amount of
responsibility to think that you were going to be, and I'm just saying, as a school board
member, a school board trustee, you have all of those childrens and the community members
future.
You're making decisions for them.
It's absolutely crippling.
It was, when I left the board, honestly, I was just like, felt so defeated and also was
during COVID, so that's a whole other layer of chaos and things.
But to see somebody who I believe to not have the best intentions for staff or students
or the district or the community, and to just not be able to do anything about it, except
for, you know, stand the alarms as much as I could, it was, it was honestly just so
crushing.
844-967-2789, 844-967-2789, if you want to call, jump in, give us a call.
Danielle Ford, she is the host of her own podcast, Unraveling Education, we're going to talk
about that a little bit, we're still talking about her adventures school boarding.
And Joni, I had an adventure in school boarding and that didn't work out so well because
I went, I told Danielle about this when we were doing the pre-interview, a school district
I went and we had an opening and I said, well, I can do it, you know, I've been a second
grade teacher, fifth grade teacher, I've worked with, you know, all these, and yeah, I went
and put my name in the hat because this was a special election and I got told before
I even the election that I wasn't going to get the vote because, well, you know, I'm a
liberal atheist socialist who was out to, the only reason I wanted to get on the board
was to do away with the Christmas play.
So that's what they told you?
Yes, yes, that's what you get, that's what you get for being the local crimudge in
him.
It is really political, it's more than an adventure, too, I want to highlight, it's a civic
duty and it's the way, I mean, we always talk about in democracy how important it is to
vote, but beyond that, we all have a voice, too.
And so getting involved in local politics, getting involved in things like school board,
it's part of our civic duty, it's, you know, LA Tom calls all the time and reminds us,
you know, we are government for the people by the people and so when people take on that
responsibility and take a big chunk of their time and their energy to help make something
like our school is better, right?
It's a really important work to recognize as a civic engagement, I'm sorry, I didn't
work out for you, but also just that process, right?
Oh yeah.
It's important to engage and to be, you know, litmus for what is the political landscape
of our school board races?
What are the things that determine these positions and how do those maybe even exaggerated
stereotypes of your politics, Tim, that don't really, I know you, I know you're pretty
well, you know, and I know that you're not out to end the Christmas play.
I like Christmas.
Big, big advocate for, you know, like Daniel talked about, like diversity in our schools
and that maybe there is more than Christmas than that our young people and families are
also celebrating, right, around that time of year and so I think you would be an excellent,
you know, voice to remind us of, there's a lot happening in our schools and diversity
is really important.
That probably got spun into Tim's, you know, an atheist socialist trying to, you know,
convert all these kids to Marxism.
Well, my biggest problem was, is that I was, you know, I was a college professor, which
is a guarantee that all of those other things are true, I mean, because it's, it's well
known.
Danielle, though, I mean, we're going to keep in you here, because we want to talk
about the podcast.
We want to talk very specifically to about one of the episodes of the podcast about the
history of school boards, because, you know, what we're trying to do here every night
now is we're educating everybody who's listening and the idea of school boards and that first
entry and, hey, guess what, we're on civic media.
It's the civic duty to do this type of work.
It's busted pencils.
It's fully-led education clock.
The numbers eight, four, four, nine, six, seven, two, seven, eight, nine.
More with Danielle Ford when we get back.
Ah, that's what we do.
We pull you through the undertow eight, four, four, nine, six, seven, two, seven, eight,
nine, busted pencils, fully-led education, talk, educated educators, talking education,
our guests from the Unraveling Education Podcast.
Danielle Ford, she was school board member Clark County, Las Vegas, fifth biggest school
district in the country, $3 billion budget she told us during the break.
My goodness, that's massive.
But Danielle, when you first came on the show though, you made a comment about, you know,
GED school, you know, school didn't work for me.
How does then if school doesn't work for you, is that potentially part of the motivation
to run school for school board?
That was definitely a part of why I ran.
But I learned a lot along the way, you know, like one of the things as I was undiagnosed
ADHD, I got diagnosed when I was 30, and then that was like a whole process.
But, you know, there's 11% of our students who are struggling with their executive function
and why aren't we, you know, making classrooms that are going to support divergent learners,
you know.
So a lot of these was kind of like common sense things that I wanted to go in and ask
questions about and find the answers to.
And then I found a bunch of other questions I actually like within the first year I realized
none of this stuff is going to get done, it doesn't matter how much logic I bring to
it or what the community wants because the people in charge are going to keep things
status quo and they're going to keep doing what they have been told to do by the people
that have their ear.
So you know, that's what the unraveling education is about.
So I started researching it very deeply and I learned that so it's kind of twofold.
I learned that a lot of these things are happening in districts nationwide, especially the
large districts with large budgets.
And I learned that County isn't really on anyone's radar.
So I'm like, I'm going to put it out there and hopefully let these, you know, other researchers
and people that are paying attention to this and could maybe help, you know, find out
what's going on.
And also the community itself is going what's going on with schools.
So I want to tell all the details, you know, it was actually better when I was in school.
Hmm.
I feel actually really not guilty or bad or whatever.
And for it's unfortunate that my kids grew up in the standardized testing era.
I didn't.
All the things that I was complaining about, it's like, I kind of would bring that all
back.
I wish you know, my bring exactly my kids to it, me a big opt-out movement.
So well, then let's get to it though.
So now unraveling education, the podcast and talking about school boards, check it out.
We'll give you it before, before, before you go here, we'll let you pitch all the places
people can find it.
But I, one of my, the episodes we're dealing with here, I mean, you do a deep dive.
It's history of school boards and why they're under attack.
And you did a huge deep dive into the history of school boards all the way back as far back
in people, you know, I mean, you kind of even made this, you know, back to Columbus.
Well, maybe a little bit of fast forward.
School boards.
So tell us everything.
I mean, how long have school boards been around in America?
So the original school board, as we would know it to like some sort of group of people
that are making decisions was like in the mid 1600s, and the reason that that actually
happened was, so it was a town officials that just that, as Colin needs expanded, we're
like, okay, we need someone to do this and make decisions for the school.
I guess it could be us.
So they named themselves a select man.
And then they kept growing and growing.
And it was really the religious colonials who they passed a law that was any town in Massachusetts
that had a hundred families attending a school would have to make like a school board.
And the act, the act that they could, they called it was the old deleter state in act because
it was Satan that was trying to stop the boys or who attended school, the boys from
learning scriptures and being able to sign their names.
So because that happened, it was man data that school boards existed.
And then now that law is known as the Massachusetts law of 1967, it was renamed later.
But then, you know, school boards were governing in all these different ways.
So they were doing, you know, sometimes they put a business in charge of the town or
sometimes they would have the church, you know, handle the town.
But the biggest controversy was that they could pick and choose students and that it was
mostly being taught religion in these schools, but yet taking public funds.
So then it was for about a hundred years that happened until around the American Revolution.
They didn't put anything about school boards in the Constitution, even though they wanted
to, but they just were arguing about it.
They didn't know how to, you know, make decisions around that.
And then it was eventually Thomas Jefferson who said, hey, guys, we shouldn't make rules
around what kids should learn, you know, that should be up to the community.
But what we should make rules about is who is going to oversee what they learn.
So we should say that there's going to be school boards and they are made up of community
members and that they're elected and that they are guards of town funds.
So that was when school boards originated and then it was another, you know, a hundred
years or so before any type of cohesive model through the state.
So it was actually to protect from the state because Thomas Jefferson knew that with
a changing political ideologies, but the kids would be susceptible to that.
Yeah, not like we are, we're not seeing that right now, but it, but I mean,
and so it's a long history, but Johnny, what I hear though, it is a history of
democracy when you put that out there.
I mean, this, this concept of saying that the community has a responsibility to take
on the, the care and the welfare of at that time, you know, making sure boys could
read the Bible, but the roots of democracy there.
And so, you know, going up and all the way now, so when you ran for school board, I
mean, you were participating in a 400 plus year experiment in democracy.
So again, hats off, Daniel, to the fact that you were living and breathing truly the
American values of democracy, self-government and jumping in and saying, I'm going to take
responsibility for this, Johnny, I see you're not in the way there, man.
Well, sure, just a little, like, just a little, like, ground level definition of democracy
is, you know, decisions being made by those impacted by the decision.
And so when we think about that, that, that historical argument or conversation around,
how do we decide what is taught and learned in our communities, and that that has responsibility
to the greater whole as well, but also very locally important to the conversation.
So, you know, school boards having a rich history of being a place where decisions are
being made by those directly impacted by the decision.
What are the things that we value and really emphasize ought to be learned in our communities?
And that said, our communities are connected to a larger whole, a common good, or a greater
being in a sense of where that fits into our states and our country, but that rich history
is really important.
And it's certainly messy, democracy is not easy, right, and this whole idea of having
these conversations and being generative about those debates, those conversations is really
important.
And it's certainly not easy because we've really blurred local and beyond and voice
and power and how much money is influenced in that, how much corporate interest is a part
of that conversation and who really benefits and suffers, sometimes falls to the back end
of it.
So, I love hearing about these instances where people who have a passion, have experience
and want to be generative part, generative and contribute to that conversation, get in
there and do it.
And so, you know, Daniel, thank you for that.
And then, whoa, man, holy smokes, we just glossed over it, but you gave us a snapshot
of the deep dive into the history of school boards, but tell us more about the podcast
and how you got into doing that, because it's a huge resource out there for folks who
want to know more about this.
I mean, Danielle's got really great content that takes us deep into these topics in an
everyday way.
And so, tell us a little bit more about the education unravel.
And rambling education.
So, thank you.
It took me a long time to figure out how I was going to do the podcast, actually.
And I basically announced it one day, I was yelling at the school board after I lost my
election in 2022.
That's the whole, you'll hear about it in the podcast, but I was, they selected somebody
and funded her to replace me as a whole thing, but I was yelling at the school board about
someone they were hiring and I just kind of was like, and you'll hear about it on my
podcast.
And so, they're like, okay, then the news would report it on it and I was like, I guess
I'm doing a podcast, but it took a few months to really, for me to like figure out how
I wanted to do it because I was thinking like, you can't just blast all the information
out.
And I didn't want to like, just kind of put content out or what I wanted to say.
I was like, how did I learn this?
I learned it from going through it myself.
So, let me take other people through it exactly how I did.
So, I'm telling the story from, you know, all the way back to when I didn't know anything
and then all the characters and how I researched things and how I started putting things together.
And it has a really good turnout, you know, I had actually got funded, I launched first
like asking for sponsors to help support the initial launch and to buy equipment and things
like that.
And it's like 50 teachers, you know, funded it, you know, there's a big desired appetite
to know the truth because everybody knows that the district is corrupt and there's just
so much shady stuff going on that they're like, we want to help, we, you know, we want
to elect the right people, but we need to know how to tell if these are the right people.
And we need to know, you know, should we support which trustees we should support and
how can we make our voices heard?
So, you know, I'm basically like, I'm not telling you what to think, but I'm telling you
what I thought and what I learned and I'm just putting it out there and you can form
your own opinions and just hoping that by the end of, you know, me getting through the
story, people are prepared to take the district back the sex election cycle one four of
the seven trustees who are up here.
So there's the name then unravelling education because you put it out there and the story
telling from the unravellingeducation.com website, quote, we will be investigating the underlying
issues harming our public education system and identifying key players involved.
Okay.
So, Daniel, I got to ask the question.
Any pushback?
Um, that really actually, I know it's coming because I started, you're identifying the
key players, you're unravelling this mess.
I mean, I got sent like at least 10 seats of this list while I was on the board and
I just threw them in the garbage.
So it'd be the same exact people that would be doing something now and I'm like, what
are you going to do?
Like, give it your best shot.
I mean, that's fast.
I'm doing your democratic, you know, civic duty on the school board.
It's my job, my responsibility to speak to you.
Are you ready?
Let me just tell you this right now.
I'll just give you one little spoiler.
Okay.
This is coming down the like a couple of years down the line and the storytelling, but
the superintendent at one point after we fired him and then he was rehired.
He said, I'm not going to come back unless all seven trustees, including Danielle Ford,
signed this note agreeing to not speak to the media and not say anything negative about
the school district or me.
I'm like, so you're asking me to give up my first amendment, right?
Yes.
Then I said, no, I said, I'm getting an attorney and the trustees voted me out of that
closed meeting.
They said, should we kick to me?
I'll have this meeting.
And it kicks me out of the meeting.
That's how crazy is and how the trustees have signed their power away, they've given
complete control to the superintendent who's flooded by a big business and the community
is just like, what is happening?
Someone tell me so I'm like, I'll spill the tea.
But on that, I mean, somebody listening right now, I'm like, oh, that's, I'm not getting
involved then.
That's a disaster.
That's a mess.
But I think I would turn that around and say what Danielle's pointing out is hopefully
not a call to then, therefore, not getting involved, but to realize that there is something
there.
Joanne, Joanne, Colin from Madison, Wisconsin, Joanne, how are you?
Great show.
I'm wondering whether or not having a student on a school board would be a good idea.
There's just that realization of what's at stake when you look at somebody in a meeting
who's actually got skin of the game of physically and all of that.
I'm just wondering, does any school board that you know of have a student, we have a student
on our Board of Regents at the University of Wisconsin, and that was where I got the
idea.
Nice.
Thank you, Joanne.
Danielle, what do you think?
So, I actually think that there should be, I would say, non-voting members at first
and I mess up all the political stuff, but there should be a teacher of support staff
and admin and a student who are on the board as non-voting members at least to be part
of the conversation.
Maybe even, you have to change a lot, you have to be a bill, you have to be like a whole
thing to, you know, actually change the makeup of the school board.
But yes, I believe the student voices are extremely important.
We do have a student committee, but it's kind of like, ran by the superintendent and kind
of just steam rolled through.
I absolutely think that students should be at the focus, the center of everything that
we're doing and to get their experiences to make decisions.
Well, she is Danielle Ford, the podcast on rambling education, on rambling education.
Not com.
Yes.
Danielle.
Here's what we say.
Thanks for busting pencils.
You're welcome.
I will keep best in them.
Nice, nice, nice.
I'll do it.
Hey, and like always, Johnny Tim, we'll break it down when we get back, busting pencils
back in a break.
Uh, well, I'm back, busting pencils fully-ledded education talk, educated educators,
talking education, blue collar scholars, more to come on that, though, just kind of put
that out there, you know, twist pinch people a little bit.
Are you a blue collar scholar?
Because if you are, Johnny and I are looking for you, the number 844-9672789, Johnny just
had a great guest, Danielle Ford from Las Vegas, fifth biggest school district in the country.
She served.
She's a school board member.
She now has her podcast on rambling education.
We had a great call over it before the break, Joanne wanted to talk about whether there
should be student representatives on the school board.
Johnny, you have some knowledge on that front.
I mean, I don't have the exact quotes here, and we'll look it up to follow up with it
later this week as you tune in, you know, to the weekly show.
But here's one of the big things is, yes, yes, Joanne.
I know in the state of Washington, and I know some other districts, I know in Portland
schools, that student representatives on the school board is a thing, as well as it's
nationally advocated for, that there are some students sometimes called scholar representatives
or, you know, youth voice involvement, but it is increasingly part of the process to
include students very similar to, and Joanne brought it up, you know, a student representative
on the board of regents for higher education listeners out there and folks, you know, who
are more familiar with that college sort of structure of things.
It is, it does exist.
It's growing.
It's been found to have great value, and of course, makes sense, right?
Like I see our producer Anya, who oftentimes we throw on the spot and say, hey, from the
voice of the youth and from educators out there, you know, and she's usually like, yes,
not rocket science, guys, you're running a lot of time around young people, maybe young
people should be part of the conversation.
Oh, and you give us a, what do you think students on the school board?
Yeah, we got to get students on the school board.
I was, I was sitting here thinking about how when I lived in Warsaw and I was a high school
or we weren't invited to be on the school board, but a group of students, two kind of for
me, high school were actually invited to be the people, I can't think of the right word
right now.
We moderated, that's the word.
We moderated the Warsaw one of the mayoral debates that year, and I routinely look back
on that experience that gave me such deep insight into the workings of the city, how the
people who were running my city were behind closed doors.
I have some crazy stories about that.
And I think about the school board.
If nothing else, you know, a school board is kind of like the government of a school.
I got this experience as a student to work in our actual government.
Why wouldn't our students?
And not just one student from one background, not just one student from one neighborhood,
but a couple students and a couple teachers to really get the breadth of opinion out there.
I think that's not a no-brainer, but a must be done, certainly, yeah.
Must be done.
Yeah, love it.
Yeah.
Especially if we build on that definition, Tim, that I threw out there earlier, the definition
of democracy at a ground level is decisions being made by those being impacted by the
decision.
So if we're talking about schools and we're not involving them, people, it's like,
what Tim Cleetley is, and which of those grown folks tend to do all too often?
Well, now, is it, yeah, I mean, first of all, talk about if the decisions are impacting
those, then they should have a say, boy, school has for the longest time been largely not
about those who have the most kind of effect impact, you know, this decision making is part
of it, though, potentially now, though, because you say border regions, higher education,
colleges, is this still, though, the idea of going, hey, we can't really have a seventh
grader having a say they're not an 18 year old voting adult.
How can they have a political vote in a decision making when they themselves don't have the
ability to vote or we don't even recognize them?
I wonder what Tim, it opens up a big question, right?
And it really is for listeners out there to think about and for us, especially as, you
know, folks working in this system, do we truly believe that young people have a voice
in that their voice matters?
If we do, then it, like Anja said, it's not a great suggestion.
It's a, we ought, we ought to be and why aren't we doing this?
Yeah.
You know, so really comes down to like, how do we value or understand young people as citizens
in our community and in that arbitrary, you know, age of 18, right, being rather arbitrary
when we break it down, especially when we talk about that idea of schools historically
not being very democratic and not being very centered around children's rights, sort of plug
our show for Wednesday, we have educators amplified that come on with us and they come
with that position that every child's voice matters and ought to be valued as well
as, you know, they're right not only to learning, but to being in an environment with, you
know, regulated adults, I don't mean adults that have a lot of rules, I mean adults that
see them, right, see them as children, as human beings with voices that are valued, they
can speak truth to the experiences they're having and that we as educators can be responsive
to that, right?
They're not manipulated in like, they're not, they're not little, little bits of coding
we can put in an algorithm, you know, they're living, breathing, sentient beings with rights
and values and so I think there's tears of how they're involved, right?
We don't need a double point responsibility, hey young person, you know, the new budget
is due by 5 p.m. tomorrow, I mean, those are responsibilities that we delegate out to
people who have those skills, but certainly speaking to their experience and offering
suggestions around thing is paramount to the democratic process, especially if we value
children's rights.
Well, yeah, and talk about, you know, kids, let's ask them, you know, how's school going?
How's this working out?
How's this new curriculum that we bought?
What do you guys think?
I mean, my God forbid we would ever do something like that.
Well, in our guest annual brought up tonight, I want to echo it, you know, I always talk
about it with teachers, there are different kinds of teachers out there.
And when you come to become a teacher or you make that, have that realization, hey, I
want to be an educator.
It's often something that you've been thinking about for really long time.
So there are a lot of people for who school worked awesome for that tend to gravitate
towards becoming a teacher.
There are also a large number of people for whom school didn't work great for who say,
you know what we could do better.
And there are kids who are like me, or maybe they're different than me, but they're not
benefiting in the way school is.
And I'd like to do this differently.
And so that's a really great perspective and in position to become into education from.
So big props to Danielle, you know, who shared her push out story, you know, of school
not quite working the way it was for her, but then bouncing back and really having a strong
voice in it, especially Danielle Ford was our guest, her podcast Unraveling Education.
Check it out.
Check it out.
And again, hey, if you're thinking that there, you're like, if you're a student listening,
go go ask your school, what, when are you going to be asked what you think because that's
the other thing we want to encourage students that are listening to busted pencils.
You do have a voice in what you do out in schools does matter.
And we should be hearing more and more of it tomorrow.
Busted pencil busted pencils, got some trending education news.
See you tomorrow night.
Busted pencil.
Busted pencil.
Busted pencil.