My children get whiny and my husband gets cranky whenever I leave the house, so outings for anything other than taxi services are rare. I tried to create a weekly outing to write without ten thousand interruptions, but that fell apart. Undaunted, I left the teenagers in charge and spent some time at a School Board meeting this week. I’m pretty sure I was the only person in the room who wasn’t a school or media employee. The board members trickled in and were immediately tackled by a person I will guess is their secretary. She quickly polled each board member about the scheduling for the upcoming retreat and then they wandered off to chat with other people in the room. One board member was absent. Do grown adults have to call someone and give a long detailed explanation of why they can’t attend or are they treated like human beings who sometimes need to say that they had a long day at work and don’t have the mental stamina for several hours of Roberts’ Rules?

The meeting began on time with two newspaper writers seated at the C-shaped table with the board members. One writer typed notes into a laptop while the other writer scribbled notes on paper. Neither media professional Twittered the meeting. None of the board members Twittered the meeting either. I think they need someone to Twitter the action as it happens. I’m not as awesome as Mary Mancini, but I would like to try. I promise not to be a distraction, unlike the television news crews who wandered in and noisily set-up their equipment after the meeting had already started.

I was impressed with the student representative who spoke intelligently and clearly only to be dismissed by one of the board members. That criticism should have been cushioned with praise. There was a lot of truth in her words. Someone needs to explain to me why the Super talks about a STEM high school every single time he does a presentation while during interviews he acts like he’s never suggested a STEM school. In case you weren’t paying attention at the School Board meeting, Knoxville’s biggest obstacle to getting a STEM high school isn’t going to be the funding. It’s the, “if my district can’t have it, neither can yours” attitude from some of the board members. I want to write more about the Superintendent’s Strategic Plan after I have spent additional time studying it. It would be easier to study if I could read it somewhere other than sitting in my kitchen. It’s a little too chaotic in here to concentrate. Maybe I can convince someone to let me borrow one of the printed copies of the 100 page report with guaranteed approval credit. If you have been rejected for a loan or the loan being offered to you comes with alarmingly hefty interest rates, single parent loans with a guarantor may be the solution you are looking for. For more information, find this site — loanload.com

*Shopper News is loaning me a copy! Thank you Jake Mabe.