“It’s my constitutional right to be as mean as I want to you guys.”

'Toxic and impossible to do': School boards see exodus of members tired of dealing with anti-mask parentshttps://t.co/YayxNA4tpt

— Raw Story (@RawStory) August 29, 2021

That quote is from the AP story:

In Vail, Arizona, speakers at a recent meeting took turns blasting school board members over masks, vaccines and discussions of race in schools — even though the board had no plans to act on, or even discuss, any of those topics. “It’s my constitutional right to be as mean as I want to you guys,” one woman said.

I know of a local school superintendent who went to her car after work and found it had a flat tire.  Her husband came up to repair it, but first he checked all the tires, and the flat one, looking for signs of vandalism.  It was a nail, but he suspected someone had slashed her tires.

Don't get me started on the rising number of people who just say "I pay taxes!" as if they were your sole employer or the only reason the schools were still open.  The sense of entitlement has always been there, but it's a rising tide now.

No one, of course, has a constitutional right to be mean to public officials.  As the article points out, most school board members are volunteers.  They pay money to run campaigns (yard signs, etc.), then get nothing when they win except the drudgery of school board work.  Most people don't know what the school board is doing, and don't care.  At local meetings if there is room on the agenda for public discussion, the room is packed with people waiting to bitch and moan, if only for one minute (the time limit at the board meetings I know about).  When that segment of the agenda is over, they clear the room.  Stay and see what's actually being done for the schools that teach their children?  Are you mad!  There's TeeVee to watch!  Or at least better things to do.

Don't get me started.

"It's my constitutional right to be as mean as I want to you guys."  My response would have been "It's my constitutional right to tell you to sit down and shut up, bitch!"

A board member in that school board meeting is quoted after the meeting:

“There is starting to be an inherent distrust for school boards, that there’s some notion that we are out to indoctrinate children or to undermine parents or things like that, when we are on the same team,” said Pratt, who has been on the board six years. “We are here to help children.”

But the shouters and the screamers are not there to help the children, any more than the parents in a divorce action are helping the children when the battles of the divorce use the children as proxies.  These people don't care about the children, they care about themselves.  I've heard stories of students in the local schools acknowledging it's their parents who are crazy on the subject of masks, not the students.  They're happy to do what keeps them safe.  The parents argue over what that is, and do so from ignorance or Facebook or FoxNews, or in the case of the doctors, from science.

Vail board President Jon Aitken is among [the board members across the country facing recall votes]*, targeted by critics who say the mental and physical health of students has declined under pandemic restrictions. The Arizona board has faced contentious issues in recent years, including the Red for Ed movement three years ago, when 50,000 people rallied at the state Capitol for increased education funding. But he said this is different.

“That was a very real issue, with legitimate concerns on both sides,” Aitken said. Much of what is said today, is false or simply made up, he said.

As the words of Paul in his original Greek said over the door of the dormitory of my seminary:  "The things unseen are forever."  Or as I've put it before:  Things don't matter.  Ideas don't matter.  People matter.  But when we place ideas before people, people become things, and all that matters is "us."  And "us" is just an idea.

*which strikes me as explicitly bizarre.  Board elections here barely rate any notice, turnout is miniscule, and terms are only for two years.  Why force the expense on the school district of a recall election (the regular elections are expensive enough:  machines, vote counters, etc.) for a term that's so short and, actually, almost so meaningless?  Apart from mask mandates, school boards do very little that directly affects the students, except inasmuch as they maintain, or fail to, the school buildings (the district I grew up in finally replaced the schools I attended 50 years after I was gone.  They still have one building that was 50 years old when I was there, still in use.  One of the three schools I attended was brand new; the high school I attended needed to be replaced while I was there.  It's still an embarrassment to me, and I'm glad I didn't raise children there.).  And frankly, the question of masks will be behind us in another year, if not sooner.  It could be much sooner if the same people screaming at board meetings about masks would get vaccinated and stop being so publicly stupid.