The Mission Statement

Greetings from Fuddle River Schools. This week the board held a meeting involving all stakeholders to begin the process of developing the district mission statement. Fuddle River Schools has never had a mission statement, and as board member Henry Gullickson stated, "It's a wonder we ever got anything done."

This first meeting was planned as a public brainstorming session. As Gullickson explained, all stakeholders were to provide ideas for a mission statement and eventually those ideas could be synthesized into the new district mission statement. Brainstorming ideas were offered by administrators, teachers, cooks, custodians, paraprofessionals, students, parents, and business and community leaders. In the spirit of brainstorming, no ideas were criticized. The ideas from the brainstorming are listed below.

Fuddle River Schools Exist to:
o keep young people off the streets during regular business hours.
o cover all of the stuff in the books.
o ensure that all students learn, even if we have to force them.
o keep young people from hurting each other and from hurting the older people.
o train young people to eat their vegetables and clean up after themselves.
o prepare young people for the drudgery of real work in the real world.
o prepare young people to deal with the messes made by the older people.
o prepare young people to consume material goods and to balance the spending limits on several credit cards at the same time.
o nurture passive citizens for an apathetic electorate.
o help young people feel good about themselves, even if it requires some self-deception.

At the end of the meeting, Gullickson stated, "Now the important work can go forward and the board can craft a mission statement that will at least equally dissatisfy all of the stakeholders who participated here tonight." The Fuddle River board will meet on Tuesday evening to continue work on the mission statement. The board invites any other stakeholders interested in sharing ideas for the mission statement to please just keep them to yourselves.

And that's it this week from Fuddle River Schools.

Copyright cc 2011 by John P. Wood for Learning Laffs

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