By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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School Board "UN-Election" (1384 Words)
(63rd Day Of School)
(Wednesday, November 5, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
Empath Remixes #91 – School Board "UN-Election" (63rd Day Of School) (1384 Words)
The city’s mayoral race this week looked like déjà vu wrapped in irony.
The multi-term incumbent barely survived a challenge from a millennial upstart.
The outcome was close enough to feel like change … but safe enough to preserve the old order.
Watching the results trickle in with my daughter brought back a painful memory … from my own season of “public service.”
Once upon a time, during my years at Tech High (the public charter school I helped to start) … I was elected as the faculty representative on our school’s governing board.
I believed that an election was a mandate.
I believed that voice equaled value.
What I did not realize then was that I had been elected to serve as a token … not a trustee.
My role was to be seen … not heard.
When I began to speak with clarity and conviction, the rules began to change.
I “hollered” because the house was on fire.
The startup school had few policies, inconsistent procedures, and leadership that confused authority with ambition.
My writing, oratory, research, and analytical habits filled the void.
I wrote policy when none existed.
I rewrote documents that others misunderstood.
I drafted improvement plans, accreditation narratives, and renewal charters.
I investigated and reported on break-ins … traced gang activity … and exposed the private wars that sabotaged our public mission.
I became the school’s unofficial historian ... documenting not only what happened, but why it kept happening.
My words were welcomed when they solved problems … and condemned when they identified causes.
But they existed … and could not be ignored.
The more I wrote, the more the by-laws changed.
“Red lines” began to follow my name … which I could track … because I kept our by-law archives.
At first, the rules shifted to make me ineligible for board service because I taught only one class.
To thwart my re-election years later, the eligibility criteria shifted again to disqualify votes from “staff” members who had dared to support me as their “faculty” representative.
Each amendment was a containment strategy disguised as governance.
Each “touché” was the institution’s way of saying, “We can move the goalposts faster than you can score.”
I told my daughter this story as a civics lesson.
I wanted her to see that democracy inside institutions often functions like performance art.
Elections exist to appear inclusive while maintaining control.
The people who “push” the system are often treated as enemies of the system, even when their push is what keeps it honest.
I also wanted her to understand why I eventually walked away.
There is something empowering … and draining … about discovering how much energy people will spend trying to marginalize one voice.
When I reread my “farewell epistle” to the Tech High board, I heard peace and prophecy.
The 2011 letter sounded like the 2025 echo of my own classroom reflections ... warnings about containment, knowledge leaks, and cycles of dysfunction that repeat until the truth-teller leaves.
I wrote then that “those who tell do not know, and those who know are never asked to tell.”
Fourteen years later, that sentence still holds.
I could lift it from that email and paste it into any current report about how schools treat experience as liability rather than legacy.
In that letter, I accepted that my legacy would be polarizing.
Some would appreciate me deeply … others would hate me quietly … many would pretend not to see me at all.
I have learned to live with that paradox.
Leadership that speaks truth is rarely popular … because it exposes illusions.
I have spent two decades learning that conviction without compromise often invites containment … disguised as collaboration.
Reading my own words again, I noticed something else … I was already trying to leave with dignity.
“Perhaps a key reason why I am received and perceived with such disparity,” I wrote, “is because I stand, speak, and act on my convictions even if I am a lone voice.”
That statement reads like autobiography now.
It is the same sentence I could write about my current school, my district, even my church.
The settings change, but the lesson repeats … institutions reward conformity, not conscience.
The “school board UN-election” I experienced years ago mirrors what happens when leadership fears legitimacy.
Rather than listen, it legislates.
Rather than dialogue, it drafts new rules.
Rather than reform, it redefines membership.
It replaces inclusion with illusion.
In the end, my departure from Tech High was less about loss and more about liberation.
I left when I realized that being right in the wrong environment can feel like imprisonment.
What I remember most about that time is how writing became my only honest language.
When speech failed, the page listened.
When meetings became manipulative, documents became evidence.
The written word preserved what politics tried to erase.
That is why I still have the red-lined by-laws and the farewell letter.
They are not artifacts of bitterness … but proof of authorship.
They remind me that I was there, that I saw what I saw, and that I told the truth in real time.
As I told my daughter this story, she asked a simple question … “Would you do it again?”
I paused longer than I expected.
“Yes,” I said finally, “but differently.”
I would still speak truth, but I would choose my battles with more precision.
I would conserve energy for the fights that matter most.
I would not confuse presence with influence, or victory with validation.
And I would remember that walking away can sometimes be the most courageous form of leadership.
This conversation with her felt like both confession and commissioning.
She is growing up in a generation that still believes voices can move systems.
I want her to hold on to that hope, even as I teach her the cost of holding it.
The millennial challenger in our city’s mayoral race reminded me that change always begins with audacity ... the audacity to believe that the rules are not permanent … that the gatekeepers are not invincible … that “touché” is not the final word.
When I watch the classroom politics around me now, I see the same patterns that once played out in boardrooms … selective listening, strategic containment, quiet retaliation, and constant rewriting of the rules.
Yet I also see students who are not afraid to question.
Perhaps my task in these “last days” is to teach them how to challenge without losing themselves ... to holler with discipline … to write with precision … and to leave when the cost of staying becomes too high.
My letter from 2011 ended with a paraphrase of John Wooden … “Do not mistake activity for achievement.”
That warning still defines the difference between noise and progress … between optics and outcomes.
It also defines my current moment.
My district produces activity in abundance, but achievement ... in peace, in equity, in integrity ... remains scarce.
The “UN-election” at Tech High taught me how to measure worth without applause.
It taught me that authority granted by others can be revoked … but authority grounded in conscience cannot.
It taught me that institutions can change their by-laws to remove you … but they cannot erase the evidence that you tried to make things better.
It taught me that prophetic voices often speak last but are heard longest.
As I continue preparing for my own sabbatical … I realize that the peace I seek is the one I was already writing toward fourteen years ago.
I left that school to preserve my spirit.
I am leaving this one for the same reason.
The names have changed … but the pattern has not.
The gift of hindsight is that it transforms repetition into revelation.
I ended my farewell to Tech High with a blessing … “May all who participated in your community enjoy the peace of wisdom earned through lessons learned.”
That benediction still stands.
I extend it now to every institution that has both shaped and scarred me.
May wisdom rise from the ashes of containment.
May those who once rewrote rules learn to rewrite themselves.
And may those who tell the truth never forget that their words are seeds … even when buried by bureaucracy.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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