The Power of One Voice

The election is over! Hallelujah!

Tuesday was probably one of the craziest days I’ve lived through in a long time. I woke up already worried about how the school levy issues would work out, but had to put it out of my mind for a couple of hours for an early morning dermatologist appointment. When I made that appointment months ago, I didn’t think Election Day would be that big of a deal.

My dermatologist appointment was for my twice-a-year full-body skin check. Since getting the lovely new scar on my back, I’m on the 2x/yr plan until further notice.

I didn’t expect the appointment to be very exciting, but yet my skin always finds way to surprise me. Two more moles biopsied, one of which I never would have thought would be an issue. So it’s another two week wait for results, and not the fun results that come with two blue lines on a stick.

After getting my band-aids and wound care instructions, I stopped by my polling location to vote before going home. I was the only person in there, and seemed to be disturbing the staff who were taking a snack break. I made my choices, carefully looked over them multiple times, and hit Submit.

Then I worked through the day, pushing out a few “go vote” messages here and there, and otherwise focusing on my job so I wasn’t an anxious mess thinking about the results.

That evening, I joined others in the ItsOKAYtoVoteNO group for an election watch party. I think we were all terribly nervous, completely uncertain how the race could go. We felt we had done our best in trying to get the message out that this school levy plan had serious flaws, and wasn’t the right plan for our children.

But we also had limited funds to expand our message. The pro-levy team had over $2 million, while our group eventually spent a couple hundred dollars or so before it was all done. Media time was not on our side either.

At 8:00pm they released the absentee and early voting results, which immediately put us in the lead. That lead wouldn’t disappear the entire night, and would only grow as the hours stretched on.

We decided to take a group shot of many of the people involved behind the scenes (still missing 6-8 people in this photo).

When all was counted, the vote showed 69% against the levy. We were hoping to squeak out a win, but instead the voters delivered a powerful message against the levy. David slew Goliath.

Then it was over. The district and the mayor, who from the start told voters not to focus on the school board and instead remember this levy was coming from them and not the board, conceded by pushing the school board president – probably the most disliked person on the board – front and center to speak about the failure of the levy. It was cowardly.

Yes, we were pleased with the outcome.  We succeeded in not having this plan implemented, but even before this vote we realized this wasn’t an end, but only a beginning. Because defeating a levy and a bad plan wasn’t our end goal. Improving our district schools is the goal.

Isn’t it funny the strange paths our lives can take?

Just over a month ago, I was furious with our school district over their transportation failures. I had other issues with the current state of our district, and I wished our schools as a whole were stronger, but didn’t feel that was a topic I could do anything about.

And then a little PTA meeting happened, followed by my blog post about it, and suddenly there was hope that a small group of people – many of whom never knew each other before that meeting – could make a difference. Maybe a few people, motivated by doing the best for our kids, could use our few resources to promote an alternate message that this plan wasn’t the future, but maybe we could build a new ideal for our schools together.

Now, I’m working with some of that group on the next steps to create the positive change we hope to happen in our schools. We’ve got people talking, we have parents and community members engaged and wanting to join in, and we’re seeing that a small group of people with no political power might just get something done for our schools. Something that will benefit all of the kids and hopefully create a new dynamic for how to approach change in our school district.

It’s exciting. And terrifying. And exhausting. But mostly exciting.

The day after the election, I was proud to represent my group as the voice of the opposition on WOSU’s All Sides with Ann Fisher. Public speaking generally isn’t my thing, but radio is a little easier to do than TV, and I think I did fairly well at explaining what happened and where we planned to go from that point. We’re no longer “ItsOKAYtoVoteNO” but now “Parents for Real Education Reform in Columbus City Schools.” (PRERCCS kinda sounds like “prereqs” which was unplanned and kinda cool. Website coming soon.)

It really is just beginning. We succeeded in keeping the plan from being enacted, but now there’s a void that must be filled. So the work continues.

Never did I think that my voice could be so important.