So, I have to gush about Lily for a little bit. In Orem there is crazy drama going on around proposition 2. Essentially, a small group of city council members, rich people and super conservative people wanting more control over what happens in schools have put a proposition on the November ballot to split off into a single city school district. There are a few problems with this (even though there are no downsides according to a feasibility study they commissioned from a friend of a friend who created the company three weeks before working on the study). The problems are:
- Single city districs are extremely costly because all the extra fixed costs (data center, district building, superintendent etc) and the smaller student base means higher cost per student
- Loss of special ed and other specialty services provided by the district that will have to be stood up
- Lower purchasing power (Provo is single city and they buy supplies from Alpine because Alpine gets them for a great cost)
- Higher taxes, other single city districts have much higher taxes
- MOST importantly, almost none of the teachers, administrators, PTA school-board wants this. In fact the PTA is 95% against and took an official position against it and a majority of teachers say they would look to leave Orem if it passes for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fear of their retirements, pension, status and wages being negatively impacted.
Anyhoo, there is much more to talk about on the topic. There would be some pros to leaving like not having to fund the construction of the growing areas around Eagle Mountain, but the cons definitely outweigh the cons, and besides (as the former Mayor who joined our cottage meeting eloquently pointed out) we collaborate and scratch each others’ backs. Others in Alpine funded Orem school construction when we were booming and now we are going to help when other communities boom. That’s just part of working together as a district. Alpine will split at some point and most people think it needs to, but being a single city district seems like a super bad idea.
Lily claims that her greatest superpower is righteous anger. I can name MANY other super powers that she has, but it is true. She is good at righteous anger. She has taken a deep interest in this cause. She’s worried about educational quality, increase in taxes, property value going down, the erosion of collaboration in our communities, and the handing over of power to wealthy people with extreme political views who are not representative of Orem at large. As a result of her feelings she has canvassed our neighborhood multiple days and talked to dozens of people. She has handed out flyers, messaged all her friends, emailed the mayor, befriended the former mayor, networked with the PTA, gone to a cottage meeting with our schoolboard member in attendance and put a sign in our yard. One day I went on a walk to relieve stress and she joined me so she could canvas the neighborhood around our block. She was incredible! She was so charismatic and charming, and persuasive, but not pushy, and ultimately she informed a lot of people and got some people interested in our cottage meeting. She was so good at sales (better than me honestly) that I just felt so much admiration. I was also shocked because she has so much social anxiety and is very good at socializing, but doesn’t do it too much because of how stressful for her it is. Seeing her out in the streets fearlessly championing her cause both inspired and surprised me. Jokingly, I looked at her and said, “who are you?”
But I’ve learned that Lily has deep integrity of heart. And when she thinks something is wrong, she is prone to ACTION, and not even her own anxieties can stop her. That is one of the things I love most about Lily.
I was so pleased with the result of the cottage meeting which was the culmination of all her efforts inviting people that I had to take a picture.
