boring but necessary

We had our first Halloween Fair Planning Committee meeting today. I believe it may be a sub-committee of the Fund Raising Committee which falls under the authority of the Assembly. As we talked about what needed to be done one of the things on the to-do list was to have a motion made for parents to come in during school hours to work on the fair. There was also discussion once again about the co ops working the fair but apparently they are a little dysfunctional right now.

At the end of the meeting talk turned to re writing the by laws of the committee and what, if any authority it should have over fund raising activities held by other groups. I guess there was discussion, at a meeting that I did not attend, about the possibility of all fund raising activities having to go through the fund raising committee, whether they were open to the public or not.

What the discussion was really about, and I had to be clued into this, was power. Yes, it would be nice if there was a coordinated effort among everyone so activities aren't duplicated etc. but how do you decide which group gets to veto another's ideas. One word or two in the by laws would make a world of difference, in this case the difference is between using the word notification vs. permission. It's the difference between being informed and being in control.

the whole point of the school is to empower the students as much as possible so making the co ops go to fund raising to get permission to have an event when the committee often has to go to school meeting for permission and the co ops are formed exclusively by school meeting members doesn't make a lot of sense. After a few minutes of this I said I wanted to be a dictator, one of the staff members turned to me and said "We talk about this stuff every day. This is all we do."
Another staff said that the way the school functions is a testament to the messiness of democracy. It is messy. It's messy and it's hard, really hard to get things accomplished when everyone can have a say.