Tomorrow, the Board has an opportunity and an obligation to do the right thing and appoint the most qualified person to fill its vacant seat.  While I hate to eschew my normal humility, that person is me.

I’ve made my case previously, and I’m going to make one final pitch.

I’ve said more than once that the credibility and integrity of the Board matters.  If we get a repeat of what happened with scoring last time there was an appointment (Lesh lowballing Cognetti, while McAndrew and Schuster blatantly sank me without any objective reason), the board once again will have an integrity issue.

I’m in the education system now.  I’m on my fourteenth year of teaching in public school, seventh in higher ed.  I’ve served in government for four years as Vice-Chair of the SPA, dealing with tens of millions of public dollars.  I’ve had years of experience in the finance industry via my work at A. G. Edwards.  I’ve cared enough that I’ve run for this office twice.  And more than anyone, by a longshot, I’m on the record publicly proposing solutions to district problems.  I do it often.  So I’m not just qualified in terms of my background, I’m qualified in terms of my ability to get to work immediately on fixing problems.

I frankly don’t care about the politics of majority or minority.  I care about education and I care about taxpayers. It’s simple.  My son is on the books for three-year-old preschool and I want to make sure he gets a better education than I did.  Same for all of your kids.  And I want to make sure we do it while saving taxpayers money (see my payroll tax proposal, which will do just that).

Maybe McAndrew and Schuster will recognize my objective qualifications and step up and do the right thing.  Maybe they won’t.  Maybe other directors will get caught up in whatever odd ScrantonPAC politics crop up, maybe they won’t.

There’s an election next year.  There is no “maybe” with me.  I’ll be involved and won’t be supporting a soul who lacks integrity and wreaks further havoc on the Board and District.  The people of Scranton can’t afford it.

Things are a mess.  Hopefully, we see Directors step up and do the right thing here.  We’ll know tomorrow.