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Join The Board, See The World And Let Us Pay

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 23, 2008

Made all your summer travel plans yet? Oh, you say the gas prices have you down and instead of that trip to the Grand Canyon you had planned with the kids, you're taking the family to Busch Gardens.

I know how discouraging that can be. Americans love the open road, and now most of us are being forced to think twice about driving down to the grocery store, not to mention loading the kids and dogs in the back of the car and heading off into the sunset.

I feel your pain but think I have a solution that could put Las Vegas, New Orleans and New York back in your travel picture. That's right, you could stay at the finest hotels, write off all your meals and not even dip into your kid's college savings fund.

So how do you pull that off?

All you have to do is run for the Hillsborough County School Board. Well, you also have to win, but how hard can that be here?

The bad news is that if you haven't already qualified, then it's too late for the available seats this time around. We should all be astounded, and truly disappointed, at the lack of competition in the upcoming election. Only two members, Carol Kurdell and Susan Valdes, have opposition, and one, Jack Lamb, has not a single opponent. Unbelievable.

Such A Job

What could be a cushier job? They give you almost $40,000 just for showing up at an occasional meeting and groveling before Superintendent MaryEllen Elia. Other than that - at least from what I can glean from watching their meetings - all they have to do is plan trips out of town so they can learn something about their job. They must not have known much from the start. These people are out of town so much you would think they were county commissioners.

To be fair, not all of them are always on the road. I think District 7's Susan Valdes is probably the Road Warrior queen. She racked up $24,000 in two years on the board in travel expenses.

Last week they imposed a temporary moratorium on themselves until they can figure out a better way of doing things, or at least until the spotlight turns somewhere else and they can get back to business as usual. Fortunately for the hotel and airline industry, the board decided to keep the plans they had already made for trips to Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Naples (the one in Florida, I think).

I'm not sure what you learn about education in places like New Orleans and Las Vegas. Although I've heard if you go to Vegas and aren't real careful with your credit cards you can get an education in just one night.

The Electronic Solution

That brings me to a possible solution if the school board is unable to come up with a plan of its own to reduce travel expenses.

Why not go out and purchase a dozen or so of those electronic monitoring ankle bracelets? Like the ones they give celebrities on house arrest so they know where they are. That way, any time a school board member gets anywhere near the airport or a cruise ship terminal, a red light will start flashing on top of the school administration building downtown and a klaxon horn will blare until all school board members are accounted for.

It may not improve the educational system, but at least we'll know where they are, and we can get on with issues like teaching kids to read and write.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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