And So I Find Myself Amused

Kids, time to stroll down memory lane.

I recall when I became a parent activist that there many long-termers before me. I tried to honor their work and give credit where credit is due. Some never wanted to see their names in print and I honored that as well.

And now I'm the long-termer but yes, the day will come when I, too, will hang up my keyboard. What happens to this blog I will leave to my readers to decide on.

How am I amused? Well, there are several new parent advocates out there. I think most of them do good work. One reminds me of my former writing partner, Charlie Mas, who was a calm take-no-prisoners guy in his writing. (And oddly, he and his wife live in Tucson now.)

However, one of these people told me in an email that my blog was good for historical SPS references (true) but I "wasn't on the ground and didn't know what was going on in the schools." I did find his statement disrespectful, almost like patting me on the head and telling me to sit down.

I know something that he doesn't.

You don't do this work this long without developing relationships districtwide and even state-wide. Kind of like my own network of spies.

What is also amusing is that there is room for many kinds of parent activists but my blog? You'll find stories here that no one else is writing. From the everyday to the very serious and everything in-between. As well, I try to stay aware of events happening at schools to alert parents and others. These other hunter gatherers write lengthy tomes about district issues (which is great but if there's a fire at a school, I will report it before anyone else writing about SPS.)

What really made me smile is a topic thread on the r/seattlepublicschools page. The page was started by some Seattle Schools parents. Only one person identifies himself. As I say, I sign my name to everything because that's how you treat your own forum.

Here's the lead:

We're updating Save Seattle Schools as merger news comes in.

What? I was pleased to see a couple of readers chime in:

There may be very valid reasons to keep programs and schools. I appreciate the advocacy. Yet it is confusing that you chose the same name as Melissa Westbrook’s longtime blog. Agree it would be helpful to describe more about yourselves.

This shows how unserious you are, if you didn't know about Melissa's writing or advocacy, or even bother to read the first Google hit for your website name.

The owner of the page fires back:

that's a bit strong. It is a fairly big miss on the general cleanliness portion, but not sure you can call it unserious?

The commenter:

I am sure I can call it unserious. It's worth rebranding your work.

And this:

You’re brand new and haven’t even identified yourselves. Change the name now.

Edit: downvoted by someone who has never seen how well it works out when a new group shows up to advocate something using an existing identifier they didn’t know about. It’s absolutely better to do the name change immediately while there is no recognition or discussion. You also have the option of explaining to every single media contact that you had just never heard of Melissa and didn’t intend to look like you were representing an existing well known advocate, you just didn’t know about existing advocacy until your group was too well established to change the name.

@u/Save-Seattle-Schools please consider tweaking your name asap before more time passes, and of course please identify yourselves on your website.

Funny thing, I have praised the owner of that Reddit page.

Since I'm so "antiquated" and out to pasture, then I need not reference any of them nor their blogs here. But I can say to them that you need as many eyes as possible to know your blog/Reddit page. 

Save Seattle schools isn't exactly an obscure reference. Multiple entities using that name because they want to... save Seattle schools is more than reasonable. Why is this an issue?

Google it. You'll see just me.

Did I put people up to the praise? Nope, saw it after the fact. 

The owner of that page never said what he might do. All I can say is Save Seattle Schools is in my HRL. If this person intends to mess with that, okay then.