Advice to Opponents of School-Board-Potted-Plant incumbents

The wellness hiring debacle is challengers' chance to implant their presence on the press. Nobody will shine a light on you. When you run for office, you have to perform that task yourself.

Take Marilyn Brown's Tribune piece on that wellness-hire debacle and issue a press release about what you would have done had you sat on the board in your opponent's places. Board members all sat mute as if they didn't know about the wellness-hire outrage. This is the usual potted-plant stance. Do nothing and say they knew nothing. They are right. They know nothing at all that helps taxpayers, the students, and the teachers.

Suggestions: Say you would demand that Elia fire the idiot who hired the wellness woman manque.

Demand that Elia name a review team without any of her plants on it to investigate and report on the outrage.

Say that you hold Elia responsible for the permissive atmosphere that fosters such outrages.

Put Elia on probation and say that she gets a handle on such obscene conduct of tax-paid dummies, or she's out the door.

This press-release to tell what you would do in all board crises is a good gambit from now until the election for board candidates. Send the board a copy of your press releases to see if you can get the potted plants to lumber out of their caves to say something inept. Then lace into them and send another press release. Words are a powerful thing. Say something enough times, and people will believe you.

If you want to succeed in politics, you have to make the press aware of you. You don't do this by being a wallflower. If you have any talents for drama and self-promotion, now is the time to trot them out.

The potted plants will sleep on so that you will have the floor to yourself.

Valdes and Griffin are supposed to be the most likely people on the board to wake up and serve the taxpayers. I haven't heard any rumbles from either that show they intend to do so.

ldd