This week marks the date of decision: What will the BSD do TO the community of Whatcom Middle School? Will they be willing to renegotiate in order to publicly and actively demonstrate their belief in equality for ALL children in the Bellingham School District—or will they continue to provide soundbites and hand down decisions which actually reinforce the notion that children in the South End of this community are entitled to more and greater privilege than the rest of the populace [read “vulgarians” if you are into Aristotle]?
In the NYT online, January 27th, Thomas Friedman nails the dilemma we are now facing within the Bellingham School District: “Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, likes to talk about two kinds of values: “situational values” and “sustainable values.” Leaders, companies or individuals guided by situational values do whatever the situation will allow, no matter the wider interests of their communities. A banker who writes a mortgage for someone he knows can’t make the payments over time is acting on situational values, saying: “I’ll be gone when the bill comes due.”
People inspired by sustainable values act just the opposite, saying: “I will never be gone. I will always be here. Therefore, I must behave in ways that sustain — my employees, my customers, my suppliers, my environment, my country and my future generations.” Lately, we’ve seen an explosion of situational thinking.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/opinion/27friedman.html
I would have to agree: Thank you Tom for once again spelling out this unethical phenomenon! What we have seen since November 5th, as performed by the BSD Central Office and the Bellingham School Board, are prime examples of Situational Values. Their rhetoric continually reinforces their notions that they can and will “do whatever the situation will allow, no matter the wider interests of their communities.”
But one does wonder: At what cost? Maybe our board members and Sherri Brown are banking on “I’ll [we’ll] be gone when the [REAL] bill[s] come due.” For don’t doubt for a minute that when you treat people with total disregard, when you insist that one sector of the population is somehow more deserving of having their ideals enacted—and at the expense of many others—there will be reverberations for years/decades to come. When people are able to vote with their pencils and their feet, those very real and authentic perceptions of hurt, anger, and distrust will be made known/evident at every opportunity. Be prepared for the blowback these decisions have instigated.
And for those who think: “This really doesn’t affect me”, beware. When Lowell Elementary reopens for under 200 students in the fall of 2010, look at the resultant costs. An initial price tag of .5 million dollars, a loss/rift of up to 30 teachers, increased class sizes, reduced resources, loss of program, and teachers who are already stretched to their seams…perhaps then, the thought: “This really doesn’t affect me” might ring hollow. If WMS is never rebuilt—and please don’t swallow the kool-aid of “We will relentlessly pursue the rebuilding of WMS”—watch the property values in your neighborhoods collapse.
This isn’t just about the redistribution of a few [if you can call 600 few] students; it is about a deeply divided sense of values and ethics.
And the rippling effect of this decision will be known for years to come.
Perhaps we need to SERIOUSLY re-examine what community really means. Maybe the South End of Bellingham needs to secede from the larger Bellingham community…and find their own way to pay for their kid’s privileges. And not on the backs of the rest of us.