School Board Race Welcomes Dean Bowles.

Dean Bowles, longtime Monona resident, has taken out nomination papers for the Monona Grove Board of Education.

Just a Quick Note...

I am also not publishing any comments until after the election. There's far too much bashing of the candidates going on and it's not fair to them to let people take all the last-minute anonymous potshots that they can at them. Good luck to all candidates tomorrow and thank you for your service and dedication to this district.

Car Wrecks and Other Fun.

Until everyone can get it together and calm down, I am activating the comment moderation on this blog. Someone just posted in that I am sitting around watching this car wreck and actually enjoying it. Hmmmm. Interesting. That would be a great example of what not to post. I started this blog to facilitate better communication in our school district, not to have anonymous posters call my intentions and integrity into question. Start your own blog, under your own real name, write your own commentary and stand behind it. Then you can sift through your own anonymous comments. Have fun.

That being said, it seems that much of the current discord snowballing around right now can be traced back to questions concerning the appropriateness of a literature drop in Cottage Grove over the weekend. It seems that Jennifer Pickel and Peter Sobol's political literature were inadvertently stapled to a PTO flyer, most likely by a volunteer who didn't realize the error. Peter has already succinctly addressed this concern on his blog:

"Anonymous said...
Hey Peter, how can you and Pickel staple your political lit to PTO flyers? The PTO is endorsing the two of you? Isn't that against the rules? And why aren't you doing that in Monona, only Cottage Grove?
April 2, 2010 11:38 PM
Peter Sobol said...
I've not been endorsed by the PTO, and yes that would not be appropriate. I do know that the PTO is distributing a 'Get out the vote' flier about all the CG races - which is their perogative. It shouldn't be stapled to mine, however, that's not appropriate - and I had nothing to do with it. I assume it is individual volunteers doing the distribution just making it easier to do. I've asked that people stop."

Okay, so problem addressed and solved, right? Wrong. Apparently the bigger concern is the inclusion of a link to the mgsd.community on the flyer. As far as I know, that group endorsed two of the three candidates, hence qualifying their group as a politically active entity. As this flyer was clearly paid for by the Cottage Grove PTO, people are questioning the link between the two groups and the appropriateness of that link. Still with me? So who is the mgsd.community? I don't know. And I think that really is the underlying problem. What is this organization? Who runs it? Who is responsible? I have heard several concerns from parents in both Cottage Grove and Monona that whoever is moderating this group won't identify themselves and is pulling people off their email list if they question their identity. In fact, I just received one email on this group that the author wouldn't even let me quote from anonymously because she was so concerned about being identified as a naysayer. Huh? I was elected to serve the entire Monona Grove School District community, but I'm not on their email list. Why not? If their email address is printed on a Cottage Grove PTO flyer, does the mgsd.community speak for everyone in the Cottage Grove PTO? Every single one of them? Who is this group? Can someone please explain? And maybe, just maybe, this whole waste-of-my-time political literature debacle will be put to bed. As for the rest of this very public spat that continues to be played out in the blogosphere, I have only these words to all of those involved: knock it off already.