Gene Galin for School Board

“Sun’s coming up and something good is gonna happen today.”

As a father of three, I wish to represent Chatham County in the important decisions impacting our education system. There is a critical need to build new schools to meet the needs of a burgeoning population and to renovate existing facilities to bring them up to quality standards. There is a need to encourage energy efficiency, both in our facilities and also in our transportation.

The challenges go even further. There is a need to integrate the various boards and committees in a common focus on Chatham’s future. As an original appointee to the County’s Strategic Plan Development Committee (SPDC), I was active in developing the approved plan. For Chatham to be successful we need to foster the important connections between growth, infrastructure, community involvement, safety, employment, affordable housing, and economic growth. All are important to the success and quality of life in Chatham County. All are important to the quality of our education system.

I believe that the Board of Education, Board of Commissioners, the Planning Board and Economic Development Corporation need to have ongoing dialogue on how each can work with the other in reaching common goals. We need to include citizens and non-profits alike in this vision. Discussion needs to transcend beyond the simple budget conversations.

The Chatham County School system needs to get ahead of the curve. There is competition for high quality teachers. We need to get creative on selling Chatham County as a quality place to live.

Excerpt from Rudy Crew’s book
Only Connect: The Way to Save Our Schools

When I was young, my father used to give me a hard shake to wake me up. Then he’d stick his head right up next to my ear and say, “Rudy,” in his deep voice. “Rudy, time to get up. Sun’s coming up and something good is gonna happen today.”

My father, Eugene, worked hard. My mother died when I was two, so he raised me and my two sisters on his own, paid the bills as a night watchman at the IBM plant in Poughkeepsie after years of playing jazz in New York City. He had a lot of reasons to stay in bed every morning, but for as long as I lived under his roof, he didn’t just get himself up and out; he launched all of us out into the world full of expectations for ourselves and for the day.

Today I’m the superintendent of the Miami-Dade County public school system, the fourth largest in the country, with some 356,000 children in my care. Before that I was chancellor of the nation’s largest school system, New York City, which enrolls more than 1.1 million kids. I’ve been superintendent or deputy superintendent in Tacoma, Sacramento, and Boston. One part of my job has been to help millions of children, parents, teachers, and principals all wake up and believe the same thing that my father used to tell me every morning—that something good was going to happen today, that some light would go on in a child’s head that would let him see the way into the future and maybe even someday lead others there, too.

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Gene Galin is best known as the creator and moderator of the popular Chatham Chatlist, (chathamchatlist.com), which has over 2,500 subscribers. This  daily e-mail digest, along with the Chatham County Bulletin Board and the Chatham Journal are indicative of Gene’s desire to connect the citizens of Chatham County on issues impacting the County.