Your reporter, Ross Coyle, did a balanced job of laying out what can be known factually about Maya Vengadasaiam and Bruce Elliott, candidates for the Kent School Board.
I am a former elementary and secondary school teacher, counselor and principal who has known Bruce for many years.
First, may I say something about the Kent School District. It is a huge business. Bigger than most local corporations, it defies being rated by either profit or quality of product (which is education, the quality of which is socially controversial). Its boss makes more than Joe Biden. It has way more than a hundred employees who make more than $100,000 a year who mainly attend meetings, send memos to each other and constantly revise policies and curricula they have revised dozens of times before, but see few students directly.
The school district should be called the blob. It is like a pricey sci-fi amoeba that just wants to grow and grow, as long as it has taxes to feed it. I see Maya as a kind person who thinks the task of the blob is basically social – maybe not exactly to be a big, safe babysitting service that infects students with proper modern values – but close to it.
Bruce is a farmer, which is to say a small businessperson with a keen eye for discerning what is fluff and what is essential in any operation. Bruce will study the blob, watch it and firmly correct its most insatiable appetites, neglected purposes, and whims that are not well-thought out.
– Michael Cook
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