Planning for the Future for the CCSC

Three new members of the Clay Community Schools Corporation have been elected. I congratulate them and wish the best for their term in office. I thank the departing members and thank them for their service. I'd like to thank the people who voted for me for their confidence in me.

Our school corporation faces many challenges. It always has and always will. It is always a challenge when you are making decisions that will affect other people's lives. Whatever the challenge, we will meet it. We will never agree totally as to a solution, but we will operate the schools.

As a candidate, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with the other candidates perhaps a little more than most people. I also got a chance to meet several members of the community and hear their views. It was an interesting dialogue that will be on-going.

Some people perceive my point of view as negative in regards to our schools. To me, nothing is farther from the truth. We have good schools, with good faculties and student bodies. We have minor problems, but no major ones. While I do point out what I perceive as problems and offer information, most of my family has or is attending these schools and will for the foreseeable future. I attended these schools and I do not see a problem with my education. It has allowed me to do what I needed to do in this life and I'm sure that the education that the students receive today will allow them to go as far as they wish to go. How far that they go will depend more on their desire and motivation than their education as they can always learn if we could not teach them the things they discover that they need to fulfill their needs and dreams.

If you are passionate about education, it is hard for the public not to perceive you as negative if you speak out. If there is a way to state that there might be a problem without doing just that, I have never seen or heard of it being done. Therefore, I bring attention to problem areas when I see them. I do not like public speaking so when I stand in front of a crowd and speak, I feel that I have something to say that is important. It takes time for me to write and I do not like to waste what little time God has allowed me in this life, so I only write what I feel is important to communicate.

During my involvement with the Clay Community Schools Corporation, I had a young lady ask me if I was for or against the schools. To me, that was a self-explanatory and, fairly, absurd question. If a person did not want something better, in their opinion, for our schools, students, employees, taxpayers, and communities, why would they take a position at all or do anything?

I had people tell me that I was too much the Marine to be able to interact and that I was too used to getting my own way. I had to laugh at that, as a Marine rarely gets to do things the way that he or she wishes due to orders from above. As a Marine, I had two goals, accomplish the mission and take care of the Marines assigned to my care, period. If I had to put those Marines in jeopardy, I did my best to make sure that it was the minimum risk that still allowed the mission to be accomplished. As a Platoon Sergeant or other Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge, I often stood in front of Marines and stated that I was the laziest person among them; therefore, I wanted to find out the easiest way to accomplish our assignment, get it started, do it right, and get it done. I did not want to fail to get it done because we overlooked something and I didn't want anyone to have to come behind us and do it again because we didn't do it right. To do things in that manner takes some preparation, some knowledge, some time for research or reconnaissance just to get to the point where you can start planning. It takes interaction with other people to find out their thoughts as to what might and might not work. It takes laying your ideas aside when it becomes apparent that there is a better way. This is all part of the planning stage. Once you have a plan, you work the plan and adapt it if there is unforeseen circumstances.

One thing that I found out is that there is nothing as costly or time-consuming as a poorly developed plan. You cannot put a tank in a spot on a ship that only has four feet of clearance between the deck and the overhead. You can't move troops across five miles of water in an hour without vehicles. There are some things that you just cannot do, so you need to find out what obstacles you are facing before you start planning or you are wasting something.

You need to look at things from ground level, but looking at the same situation from an overhead point of view will reveal things that cannot be seen from ground level. You need to look at not only the task before you, but how your solution will affect the future situation.

It is in our school corporation's planning that I find fault. It seems that we are doing almost the best that we can under present circumstances, but when we start to plan something all of the facts do not come out before the decision is made or they are discounted, no one attempts to look at the situation from the overhead viewpoint, and no one looks at how the proposed plan affects the future.

From recent events, this has apparently drawn the attention of some of the members of the Board in regards to the Bus Garage. Hopefully, it may change our method of devising plans in the future.

I wish everyone passionate enough about education to make the attempt to benefit our students and other stakeholders in the corporation the best of luck.

Leo L. Southworth may be contacted at leosouthworth@gmail .com .