To Engage or Not To Engage? (2011)

When the D&C Editorial declined to endorse Willa in the Primary Election, our campaign strategy was to use the response opportunity to project our campaign message to the D&C audience.

Not surprisingly, the D&C declined to endorse Willa in the General Election as well.  Stay on message, or respond to the criticism?  Our answer was to do both.  Show how the D&C Editorial Board is looking for shallow, (“showy”, Willa calls it) accomplishments instead of penetrating investigation, superficial changes instead of structural changes.

Compare the D&Cs complaint, “Powell’s record of accomplishments is thin given her tenure” to >City Newspaper’s endorsement: “Evans, Powell, and Campos are smart and committed, and they understand the role of an elected official.”

Here is Willa’s 200 word response to be published in Saturday’s paper (according to Jane Sutter):

To readers who gave me a second look after reading my response to the D&C’s Primary Election non-endorsement, I extend my deepest thanks.

The D&C’s General Election non-endorsement (Oct 29) reads, “Powell’s record of accomplishments is thin given her tenure…”

When I served as Policy Committee Chair, I accomplished more than any prior Policy Chair.  I completely overhauled the Board’s Policy Manual.

For many years now, I’ve served as the Finance Committee Chair.  As Chair, I take care to understand the administration’s proposed budget and help stakeholders understand it.  I work tirelessly to ensure that the proposals are fully vetted by the School Board and by the public.  I facilitate dialogue, challenge assumptions, and offer my informed opinion to my colleagues for consideration.

Once the budget passes, my committee holds the administration accountable to it, and the process starts all over again.

Simply put, my chosen role does not lend itself to showy accomplishments.  It’s an essential, but perishable, effort that requires honest and continuous effort.  It requires all the attributes of my core message: Compassion, Competence and Moral Courage.

I leave it to the voters to decide, on November 8, whether that is what they want me to accomplish.

On another medium – the Smugtown Beacon – one candidate challenged the blogger’s comment about School Board member and candidate Willa Powell. To engage or not to engage. In a post that seemed unlikely to evoke such a debate, Smugtown writer, Aaron Wicks, wrote, “A politician such as Willa Powell, Van White or Tom Brennan (to name a few of my personal favorites — no secret to regular readers), offers Smugtown an opportunity to see politics free of cronyism and craven careerism.”

To this Howard Eagle had this to say:

Aaron, With all due respect, I am really, genuinely, confused by your statement that “Willa Powell, Van White offers Smugtown an opportunity to see politics free of cronyism and craven careerism.” Both of them attempted to capture seats in the NY State Legislature recently (while still “serving” as Commissioners of the Rochester Board of Education). As far as I can tell, this certainly does smack of “craven [political] careerism.” Also in Ms. Powell’s case, she absolutely works much harder to represent the interests of students and parents at some schools, which she “serves” as Board Liaison to–than others. For example, I would challenge her or anyone else to make the case that she works as hard to represent the best interests of students who attend the so-called “Newcomers School” at Jefferson, as she does for those who attend School of the Arts. This MAY not be representative of “cronyism,” but it definitely does not represent justice.

To which Willa replied:

Responding to Howard Eagle,

I wish you had been present at a School of the Arts PTA meeting where I was invited (more like called onto the carpet) for not advocating specifically for SOTA during last year’s budget process. As their liaison to the Board of Education, they had every reason to believe I would be a more forceful for restoration of funds specifically for their unique needs.

What I told them was that I was also the liaison to a dozen elementary schools that faced the complete and total elimination of instrumental music, art and library services. I told them that my first responsibility was to be an advocate for all children, an advocate for equity. If SOTA was made whole, but elementary schools were not, there likely would be no students to fill SOTA in a few years.

No doubt there were parents in the room thinking, “that wouldn’t be such a bad thing (so long as my kid gets what’s coming to him/her)”. One parent even said nearly as much, saying that the traumatized children of the schools in the crescent needed counselors, not music leasons. (Had he never heard of music therapy?) I don’t recall exactly how I answered… I was pretty flustered by that… but I am pretty sure I threw the question back at him saying, “surely, you aren’t telling me that those same children don’t deserve music?”

I’m not trying to tell you that I am perfect in this regard. But I challenge you to find a better example of some act of mine that “does not represent justice”, before I will bow to such a criticism.