The current President intends to trust these same interests with billions in tax money, well knowing or at least being advised by someone, that our schools will continue their downward spiral unimpaired if money is the only cure they can come up with. That, and excusing four billion aliens for invading the country when what we desperately need immediately is another census count.

New York spends $12,000 per year on every pupil. That’s $5000 more than New Jersey, the next biggest spender, also below national standards. Given such a gravy train it’s no surprise Redbook rated Baldwin Senior High in the early 90s one of the 140 best schools in the country. Clinton named it one of the "schools of excellence." The stage set held up for thirty minutes before the district collapsed back into its traditional mediocrity.

The vast majority of residents managed to dodge the seven candidates jockeying for three positions on its school board. What they wouldn’t dodge were the taxes. This is the story of one of those unsung heroes that give Pollyannas stomach gas.

My name is Carlan. I came in a distant last. The poll watchers had to hang around until early morning before I crossed the finish line and they could go home.

Someone stole the election from me. My poll watcher traced the end of my levers on the six machines in the high school gym to the school’s shredding machine in the basement. A investigative team from the Knights of Pythias immediately rushed to the crime scene and roped it off. They confirmed my shredded ballots filled the bin to overflowing. School officials disputed that. "It’s nothing but stale Shredded Wheat the kitchen threw out that morning and proceeded to eat the evidence."

A cub reporter for Modern Maturity was in gym when the machines were opened. She asked me what I thought was the biggest reason I nearly staged an upset?

I told her "my generally engaging personality. You could use many words to describe me. You could say humble, you could say modest, you could say unassuming. You’d be wrong--but you could say them. Lets not forget my good looks. I’m a natty dresser. Appearance is very important in campaigns. Hand-tailored suits from K-Mart gave me a distinct edge with the more upscale voter. Of course, graft always helps."

I could only think of one other reason I came in last. Someone doped my horse before the race and unconfirmed rumors were floating around that the opposition bribed my jockey. He used my animal as stalking horse for the administration’s candidates.

"Actually," I went on at great length talking about myself, "I grew up very shy. When I was a kid I told my old man, ’Nobody likes me’. He said ’Don’t say that--everybody hasn’t met you yet.’" It is really unfair that the voters didn’t take into account this genetic handicap, a deficiency in the hormone that regulates the mouth

I took my campaign to the people. They tried to run interference. A woman at the Baldwin Harbor Waldbaum’s Supermarket asked me why I would want to run for such an position? I told her my psychiatrist said it would be good therapy.

Mario Lanza, Superintendent of Schools, says it was "just coincidental" that he ordered a display of student "achievements" set up to assist the voter to making up his mind on the budget. Who am I to question this educational professional’s veracity? Voters did have to scale the displays in mountains boots, with a pick, rope and pulleys to get to the machines.

A woman leaving commented to me on the display. "These teachers can’t spell." I never attacked the teachers, having been one myself before I was fired for being a moral overachiever. Really, it’s tough to teach our children reading. They are sorely disappointed when they come to school and find out that the letters of the alphabet don’t dance around the room with purple chickens like they do on "Sesame Street".

While candidates give lip-service to clean campaigns, a little mudslinging doesn’t hurt although there’s no truth to the rumor that if a candidate tells a lie, the Nixon estate gets a residual.

I hired a private detective to mud sling. He found that the 50 year old Superintendent lived at home with his mother. She must have been a saint. Every morning was like pulling teeth. She’d say to her son, "Mario, get out of bed and go to school." He says, "I don’t want to go to school." She say, "It’s seven o’clock, you go to school." He’d whine, "I don’t want to go to school. The kids don’t like me, the janitors don’t like me, and the teachers don’t like me." Every morning Mario’s mother went through the same routine: "You’re fifty years old, and you’re the superintendent. Go to school."

I think one of my problems was that I had the shortest resume of community activities. But that was because of my youth. Remember, I am reminiscing about one of the high points in my life that happened a generation ago. Candidate Bud Rivers told one audience that that was really beside the point. One of the strictest rules is all dark horses running at least be sociable. "Go to Arthur Murray and learn to dance. Then come back and run next year," was his unfriendly advise.

When the campaign began, I hadn’t even heard of Loraine Brown, President of the board, although she was my wife before she decided not to be or Bud Rivers, a member, up for re-election. I’m surprised because I read a lot. I assumed if I didn’t know them, neither did the community. In fact, I went up to the North Baldwin Post Office to see whether any pictures of them were posted there along with deadbeat dads.

Nominees are usually called candidates or campaigners, although I was called other things, particularly by Mrs. Brown’s flunkies.

Fortunately, busing was not an issue in this campaign, although I had all my ammunition ready because my neighbor said he hated busing. "My daughter was forced to go to school with a minority group--Democrats."

The bottom line is that our schools have been largely ineffective. Not only are they a massive tax burden, but they has failed even to slow down the rising incidence of adolescence.

Some of the questions asked at two forums, one for the Vandals, the other for the Visigoth were quite provocative:

A lady in the audience read this question for a neighbor. "My son is taking advanced chemistry. Does the teacher really have to show these male juvenile delinquents how combustible water is when mixed with certain alkaloids?" The neighbor called in from the corner telephone as her house was on fire.

A woman in a Chinchilla coat got up and asked:

"Are there any drugs in the Senior High School?"

Lou Belladucci, the high school principal fielded this one. God bless, Lou, he always has a ready answer for incendiary questions. "Well, the drug problem is nationwide. But the high school principal has assured the board in several reports that there are fewer drug incidents here than any of the surrounding high schools."

"Good. I’ll tell my son to go ahead and invest in his business, there being no competition."

A distraught father, swearing profanely and jabbing a Swiss army knife into the table and pulling it out several times, asked, "My child is enrolled in a Special Education class. How come no teacher comes to class?" "That’s what makes it special," Lou answered. After that our William Tell hesitated and put away his knife. But he sat there the rest of the evening filing his nails, his toe nails, with a portable sander. I said to myself, "Boy, am I glad I’m not a member of the board." A momentary lapse of memory, but perhaps also a sixth sense of the outcome.

Positions I Would Have Addressed Had Someone Only Asked.

"I’m against sex education in the early grades. But not for any moral reason," an elderly mother in rolled down sox and a Cheap John Outlet shopping bag said. "Trying to teach sex education to third graders is like trying to get your dog to do your income tax." No one laughed. Probably because the questioner smelled funny.

I brought up a politically incorrect matter which many residents whispered to me, especially those willing to talk when I knocked on their doors after midnight. "I never ask my child what he did in school today. But I heard teachers lie around all day in the halls playing pinochle," an insomniac told me. "I said that while I ran that one down I never was able to get a photograph.

Another voter, twitchy like he was high of amphetamines, asked me what would my position be if elected and a group of high school student atheists wanted to use a school room to dissect the Bible from an objective point of view. "God only knows," I answered, taken by surprise, "how you’d break such disillusioning news to the young and impressible that the Bible is off limits in school although the library has thirty subscriptions to Playboy Magazine."

The big question I know all were eager to ask was "will I run again as a Kamikaze candidate next year?" If Mario needs unstable candidates to cannibalize each other so the establishment’s choice can walk in, I will be glad to be a martyr again in propping up Redbook’s "School of Excellence". I have only one modest question. Since when did Redbook become an authority on education? I thought their expertise was in nail polish.