It is pretty normal to go to any Wilmington civic meeting and have at least part of that meeting focused on a discussion of improving educational opportunities for kids in the city. This is a good thing, because it is pretty clear that residents know that education is important for this kids; they know that the city is full of kids who need some additional help here and they know that it will be easier for the city to stabilize if it has great schools available to all of its kids. City Leadership from both the Administration and the City Council enthusiastically join in these discussions, carving out their own place in the Amen Corner here and showing themselves as on the same page with what their constituents want. It is a bad thing because none of these meetings is a school board meeting and I have never witnessed one of these discussions where any government official: 1) explained that the City of Wilmington has no authority over the schools in the city; 2) encouraged people to actually take all of this energy to a school board meeting where something could be done to address those concerns or 3) encouraged people to get out to vote in a school district referendum.
Yesterday, the Christina referendum to fund their operations failed at the ballot box. (Pandora may have more on this.) You’d think that if the City’s Leadership was actually concerned about this issue, they would have been out in front to get the voices concerned with education out to the polls yesterday. I didn’t see any effort here — did you? Theo Gregory put on a day long education seminar about education issues some weeks back, but where was the effort to get Wilmingonians out to the polls to support the referendum?
Theo Gregory is not the only offender here. The last Town Hall meeting Mayor Williams did had Bebe Coker and the Mayor’s Strategy Chief (?) having on at some length about education. Everyone pretty much as the same spiel of the importance of education to our kids, but no one tells anyone that this conversation is pretty useless unless it happens at a schoolboard meeting. It is always disappointing to be in a meeting that diverts participants from the issues that the City can actually help resolve (trash, crime, economic development) to education issues — issues that the city has little power or leverage to address. The city’s real leverage is in constituents who are interested in improvements, so putting some elbow grease into a GOTV for a referendum or even to get people to school board meetings seems to be the only way to try to help people get the changes they need. It is time to start asking these folks what their commitment to education is when they are happy to join in the complaints but won’t use their leadership positions to get folks engaged where the desired change can actually happen.