I'll be posting a column about some recent Baraboo-area school issues next door a little later on tonight. I wanted to include something about this letter, written by the tastefully named Lance Alwin, Baraboo School District Administrator, but it didn't fit into the column.

You have to read the whole thing for context, but it's the last paragraph that really got my attention. I've added emphasis in a few places.

School Board did the right, though difficult, thing

On Monday night, our Board of Education took the courageous action of voting to close some of our most beloved local treasures, our schools. This extraordinary action was taken in order that we, as an educational community, might better face an uncertain future. As a district, we have already, for several years, been in the mode of reducing resources to our schools, children, and staff, as a way of responding to the fact that our financial resources have been dwindling. And, all things being accounted for, we expect the level of those resources to continue to recede.

As the newly selected District Administrator of our schools, I do not come to use of the word courageous in this context haphazardly. I recognize that courageous for some looks like foolishness to others, that courageous to still others feels like insensitivity. Neither of these reflections on the board's actions could be further from the truth!

Obviously, I choose to agree with the board's vote and, as reminded by the tears of some of those in attendance at Monday's board meeting, respect that others disagree with the vote of the board. Regardless, of this I am certain, as an educational community, what we all witnessed in the work of our Board of Education is akin to what I call Rushmorian leadership. The faces of our past presidents that sit atop Mount Rushmore are there because they served the common good of our nation by adhering to a set of moral principles and moral conduct that, while in office, eventually led our nation through dark and uncertain times to a brighter future for all.

Throughout this wretched process looking at closing schools, our board acted with certainty in maintaining its focus upon the shared moral principles that guide our community's way of life. They did not succumb to the temptation of taking the easy way out of a troubling dilemma by voting to please everyone. They understood full well that to do so risked eroding the existing, and future, quality of all of our children's educational opportunities and experiences here in Baraboo.

President James Madison said that the mark of a true moral leader is one that, "hears through the loud din of self interest and wants of individuals and is able to discern the true needs of its citizens, and then takes action accordingly." Our Board of Education has endeavored, as duly elected officials of all residing within the boundaries of our district, to do just that.

I wish that some of our other duly elected government officials, while claiming to serve a participatory form of governance that culls from them no form of decision-making for discernment for the common good of the whole, would stop to take heed of what has transpired by the example, as painful as it has been for us all, of the Rushmorian leadership that is alive and well in the Baraboo School District Board of Education.

Lance C. Alwin, district administrator, Baraboo School District