I was having breakfast with someone who is a person to be reckoned with in the Anchorage adult soccer community and, as is often the case, the talk turned to community based recreational opportunities for children, especially in the North East. Using elementary schools as foci for recreational soccer would reach hundreds of children and would provide real help in the "war" on childhood obesity (as compared to ASD's efforts to date, upon which I have opined already). My breakfast companion pondered whether our elite soccer programs would consider partnering with other community organizations and maybe even the District to bring forth such a vision, and my question has to be, why hasn't the District beaten him to the punch?
And while there are many answers to the riddle that serves as a title to this entry (just ask anyone in Second Grade), the one I will offer, both in consideration for the kindly words of my breakfast companion, and because it offers me a segue to the real topic of this post (those concerned about graphic images may want to skip this next bit), is an adult league soccer ball......
But if Raven were telling the story, this might be his way to look at another topic altogether. When said aloud, the riddle takes on its true dimensions, and as adults our answer (at least for a few years more I hope) would typically be "newspaper". I was contacted recently by one of the Daily News staff about a Parks issue and asked how I "got into this". I want to mention this because while many candidates are talking about what they intend to do, or what they may have decided to do in the last four weeks, what I think we all want to see is a candidate who is involved already in our community, not a candidate that says that he or she promises to get involved in the community as soon as you provide them with a salary. Perhaps we need to ask candidates not how they got involved, but why they don't appeared to be involved without the presence of a paycheck. Public service requires passion and dedication, and arguably much of what the public sees as problematic with the current Board is that, with their 20 hour per week job they are not doing their homework.
Serving on the School Board is NOT a 20 an hour a well job unless you are going to assume that everything the administration tells you is true. And while I think most in Anchorage would find such a proposition ludicrous, the question is whether Anchorage will vote somebody on to the Board who will not accept every pronouncement from District Administrators as Truth. I believe Anchorage elect such a person, and that is why I am running......
