1. clearness or lucidity as to perception or understanding; freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity.
2. the state or quality of being clear or transparent to the eye; pellucidity: the clarity of pure water. –Dictionary.com

Today marks the first day of 2020. In thinking about the year ahead and what I’d like it to be about, one word immediately came to mind – clarity.

The phrase 2020 is synonymous with our sense of sight and in particular the human measurement for clarity of vision. Of course future vision is a small part of what I’m talking about. My vision for 2020 involves being a loving husband, great father, loyal friend, inspiring leader, humble student, and a kind human. Still the clarity I hope to embody is about more than just a future vision, it’s more about living each moment with greater clarity of purpose so as to realize that vision.

In pursuit of clarity, I will listen more intently and hear the voices of others with greater patience, and empathy. I will live more mindfully, through meditation, observation, and focused acts of creation. I will think more thoroughly, speak more carefully, act more consciously, and live more deliberately.

In 2020, I will seek clarity in working to understand the difference between the things in life that I can change and those that are beyond my power to control. In discerning the difference between the two, I will seek to be an agent of positive change where it counts, and not waste my precious time and my limited energy when it truly doesn’t matter.

My belief is that greater clarity will yield more happinesses and joy, understanding and wisdom, meaning and beauty to my life and hopefully to those who I encounter on the journey.

Clarity: My mantra for 2020.

We’ll be no different. What do I mean? Let’s take healthcare for example. 

Healthcare is an area where we’ve made significant progress in recent years. We’ve guaranteed coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, expanded access to care, extended coverage to more Americans, developed new treatments and medicines, and made incremental progress toward something better. And yet, our healthcare system is still a long way from perfect.

In 100 years, I believe people will look back at how we’re managing our healthcare system today and they will ask those same questions of us. They will be shocked at our short-sightedness, our lack of compassion, our rampant greed, and our general stupidity. They’ll comment that the thing people called a healthcare system, was barely a system at all. They will note with more than a hint of irony that in many cases its ultimate goal wasn’t even to make human beings healthier. They’ll talk about how it was so bad back then, and how much better it’s gotten through time.  

The thought of this makes me smile. While in some ways, it recognizes that this is a mess right now, it’s a thought rooted in a belief that we can and will make things better, as will our children, as will their children. Not that it will be easy. Not that it will happen overnight. Not that the path will be clear or linear or smooth. But it will happen. The “better angels of our nature,” as Lincoln termed them, will ultimately prevail. 

I feel the same way about issues of race, gender, poverty, income inequality, education, pollution, climate change, and the litany of other challenges we face. The list of problems is daunting. Yet, I still have faith that we will make progress across the board. 

All around us things are broken. It’s easy to lose hope. It’s easy to find flaws. It’s easy to feel despair. But, when it seems dark, it’s good to remember that, on the whole, there’s never been a better time to be a living, breathing, human being. That does not mean that we’ve got it all figured out, that it’s all ok, or that there’s not significant work to be done and progress to be made. Hardly. To me it means that as Hans Rosling said, we’re both “bad and better” at the same time.

For a brief moment in time, we’re tasked with carrying the torch of human progress. We can stand still, we can hide in the shadows, or we can light the way forward. Let there be light. 

Looking out the window of an airplane, I had a thought that’s certainly not original, but still interesting to me. Up until the last century, no human being enjoyed anything close to this perspective, saw this kind of view, or understood from seeing it first hand that the blue sky is still there on the other side of the cold gray clouds. Hundreds of thousands of years, millions of humans, and none of them saw the world from the view of the sky. One of many everyday modern miracles we take for granted.

Gazing out my window, I thought about the people down below, looking up at what was probably a dreary gray sky on an early fall day, and yet just beyond their view the beautiful blue sky was still surrounding them. They just couldn’t see it from their vantage point. The difference between my view and theirs was just a simple matter of perspective.

Sometimes when we look up and see nothing but gray, we forget the beautiful blue that’s still there on the other side. And sometimes in life, because of perspective, we’re fortunate enough to see things others can’t.

THERE’S A DIFFERENCE
There’s a difference between right and wrong
There’s a difference between help and harm
There’s a difference between truth and lies
There’s a difference between you and I

There’s a difference between love and hate
There’s a difference between peace and pain
There’s a difference between right and wrong
There’s a difference between here and gone

I won’t apologize to you
I have a different point of view
I’m not afraid of your abuse
I’ll fight for love, I’ll stand for truth

For the last week or so it’s been bitter cold outside here in Ohio, with temperatures hovering just above zero and wind chills making it downright painful to be outside.

It was noticeably warmer outside tonight when I took the trash out to the curb – about 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Generally speaking, 30 degrees sounds and feels pretty cold. 75 or so days ago, back in October, as happens every year in Ohio, 30 also felt miserable as winter began to intrude into the beauty and comfort of autumn.

Tonight, that same 30 degrees felt borderline balmy.

It fascinates me how quickly we humans can adapt to our surroundings, how freezing cold can quickly become pleasantly warm. We acclimate. We adapt.

Everything changes. Not only does our reality always change like the shifting temperatures outside, but so do our perceptions. It’s good to remember that from time to time.

So how cold is it? It’s 30. It’s cold… or maybe it’s warm. It’s up to you.

It’s January 1, 2018. A new year. A new day. A chance to recalibrate, reorient, and reset. I’m not big on New Year’s Resolutions in and of themselves. I don’t typically wait until January 1st to try to improve my life with new habits, as that seems arbitrary to me. If I want to change something, I generally try to implement that change into life immediately. (Perhaps that’s because I’m what Gretchen Rubin, author of The Four Tendencies, would term a Questioner – more driven by internal expectations than external ones. If you’ve not read her book, it’s worth a look)

However, questioner tendency aside, what I do like to do on January 1st is to evaluate and update my current list of goals and priorities. One of those is to do a little more blogging in 2018, so sharing the rest of my plans seemed like a good idea. Who knows, maybe I’ll give you an idea or two also. So… here goes:

Things I want to do every day in 2018:

• Meditate
• Walk / Run at least 1 mile
• Yoga
• 5-minute journal
• Play Guitar
• Write Lyrics
• Do A Creativity Exercise
• Read for at least 10 minutes
• 100 Push Ups
• 25 Pull Ups / Chin Ups

I like to use the app “Streaks” on my iPhone to track my progress. It’s got big giant buttons, gives you a big giant check mark, integrates with Apple Watch and Apple Health, and is really easy to use. It also has push notifications that you can customize to time of day, so that it’s easy to remember. I’m a huge fan of trying to build a streak of consecutive days doing something, and this app seems to be just simple enough to help me accomplish that.

I fully understand that I will likely fail at accomplishing all of these things every single day. Heck, I doubt that I’ll accomplish any single one of them every day. But, I’m going to see what kind of streaks I can run up for 2018. If I can even do 1/2 of these things for 1/2 of the days in 2018 I’ll be doing ok. I’ll likely set up some internal constraints like no email or social media in the morning until morning activities are done, and similarly, do the same in the evening. The reality is that sometimes life gets in the way of a good streak, but I’ll do my best to do my best. Wish me luck.

In addition to daily goals/activities that are very quantifiable and action-oriented, I am going to work on some bigger things in 2018 as well. This list includes:

• Listen more often and more carefully
• Ask more and better questions
• Live life in the present moment
• Say Thank You more
• Send fewer emails and have more face to face conversations
• Walk / Run at least 1,000 miles (which means I’ll need to regularly exceed my daily minimum goal)
• Create more memorable Moments (See The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath)
• Complete one of Seth Godin’s courses
• Better understand and serve those I work with and work for
• Volunteer time for non-for profits
• Garden
• Record More Songs
• Play Live Music
• Coach Youth Sports
• Help with homework
• Blog more often
• Go on fun family adventures, especially adventures across Ohio
• Mountain Bike
• Skateboard
• Kayak
• Try new things and regularly get out of my comfort zone
• Own my mistakes, learn from them, and grow as a person
• Laugh, especially at myself
• Be intentional with my time
• Speak up respectfully but passionately for things I believe in
• Help Sherrod Brown win re-election to the Senate
• Follow the advice Seth Godin and make a ruckus
• Be the best husband and father I can be, and always try to do it better than the day before

I approach 2018 with gratitude and grit ready to be more curious, creative, courageous, and compassionate. May your year be filled with happiness and joy and may you accomplish all you hope to do and more.

And with all that said, I’ll hit publish, with the first of what I hope to be many posts for 2018. Let’s do this.

Not sure anymore what even makes sense
Not sure how we got here or where we go next
Not sure what to make of the things people do
Not sure how the lies got confused with the truth

In a world that’s lost its mind
Times when peace seems hard to find
When I don’t know what to do
What makes sense to me is love
What makes sense to me is you

Not sure anymore I believe what I see
Not sure who keeps score or if I’m in the lead
Not sure that I care much what they think of me
Not sure their approval is something I need

In a world that’s lost its mind
Times when peace seems hard to find
When I don’t know what to do
What makes sense to me is love
What makes sense to me is you

Not sure anymore what they’re trying to teach
Not sure why they can’t seem to practice what’s preached
Not sure If the answers are lost in the memes
Not sure that the end justifies all the means.

It’s more than a little ironic to me that the best word to describe how Ohio funds education is “stupid”. Every few years, school districts across Ohio are forced to beg their local community for money in the form of tax levies just so they can operate. Failing a renewal levy would devastate our schools and in turn our community.

It’s true that our schools receive revenue from the state and federal government, but that funding doesn’t adequately pay for basic quality education, and thus local communities in Ohio are left to either fill or not fill the gap in funding. Some levies pass. Some don’t. When they fail to pass, it can be disastrous, particularly when it comes to renewal levies. The inherent financial uncertainty associated with our current funding system naturally creates volatility, inequality, and inefficiency in districts across our state, just as it does right here in Springboro. If you are fiscally responsible and risk-averse, the way we’ve been doing things in Ohio just makes no sense.

Ohio’s public education funding system has been broken for decades, and nobody at the state level seems all that interested in actually fixing it. So, at the local level, we continue going from levy to levy, dancing on the edge of the cliff, working to make ends meet, all the while preparing for the ever-looming threat presented by the prospect of failing a renewal levy. Considering that education matters more now than it ever has to the future of our kids, our community, our state, and our nation, placing such all or nothing bets on our schools every five years, even when the odds of passing renewal levies are favorable, seems beyond crazy to me. But of course, that’s the way it’s always been done, so even though it’s stupid, we repeat the cycle over and over and over, just to make sure we can keep our schools operational. The same old same old is a dangerous approach to funding our schools. We can do better.

This brings me to the topic of the day – Issue 18.

Issue 18 is Springboro’s innovative effort to strengthen the financial foundation of our schools through the implementation of a continuing levy. It is not a new money levy. It is also not a financial panacea. It’s simply a smart way to make a small change that will reduce financial risk for our schools and our community. Issue 18 operates much like a basic renewal levy, but it eliminates the need to run renewal levies every five years and in doing so eliminates the catastrophic risk of failure. Rather than remaining in the current risky cycle of pushing our shoestring school budget to the brink of disaster and hoping for the best, Issue 18 continues the basic funding of our district without all the unnecessary drama and absolute insanity that accompanies local school levy campaigns. We’ll still be stretched to make our budget work, but at least we could remove immediate financial disaster due to a failed renewal levy from the equation.

Some folks fear the prospect of locking in our current system. I honestly don’t understand what they’re so afraid of. Here in Springboro, we spend less per student in our local schools than all but about 3% of the districts in Ohio. In return for our investment, our schools rank amongst the best in the region and the state. In spite of a stupid state system, our schools are a very smart investment. I for one think it’s wise to protect that investment.

We have an incredibly affordable, high performing school system. We spend very little, and we get quite a lot. Our schools are our community’s most valuable asset. Issue 18 protects that asset and provides a more stable foundation for our future.

Issue 18 has added benefits as well. In addition to removing the risk associated with the current renewal system, Issue 18 also ensures that those who come to our community (many of whom do so because of our schools) and build new homes pay their fair share to support our local schools. With our current renewal emergency levy, our schools don’t receive any additional local money for these new residents. Because of this, the current renewal system grows increasingly unsustainable every year as our community continues to grow. More students. Same total local budget. Less local money per student. In contrast, with Issue 18 the tax rate would stay the same as it is now, so all current taxpayers would pay the same amount they are paying now. However, when new homes are built in the district that value is added to our current district value. New families pay the same tax rate as our current residents and thus contribute their fair share to support our school district.

Opponents to Issue 18 have been pushing a range of objections that include misleading and sometimes very colorful charts and graphs, false narratives based on misrepresenting limited data points, and general half-truths about the financial management of our schools and the performance of our students. Pretty much all of the above can be refuted or proven patently wrong thanks to the incredible transparency of our school district. Springboro was an early adopter of the Ohio checkbook, where you can find all district revenue and expenses dating back to 2006. Additionally our district posts all of our financials, audits, financial reports, financials disclosures and more on the Treasurer’s page of our district’s website. We put our meeting minutes online on Board Docs and board meetings are all taped and available to the public to view whenever it’s convenient. Not only is our district financially responsible and academically strong, we’re a leader in transparency too.

The most interesting, or maybe least crazy, objection I’ve seen to Issue 18, relates to the premise that a continuing levy somehow removes local accountability with our schools. I can understand where this could concern folks at first, and if it were true, I’d be very concerned too. However as you research the facts and unpack this objection it quickly unravels.

The publicly elected school board is the governing body accountable for financial and general oversight. Our treasurer provides them, district leadership, and ultimately the community with a wealth of information about our district’s finances, as I outlined above. Our local school board members currently serve 4-year terms. Whether we operate in the current system or in the proposed system, the means for accountability is the democratic election of our local school board. That does not change. The board controls the budget and with it the direction of this or any other levy. Issue 18 is not a new money levy, and our current levy revenue is about as lean as it could get if we hope to have a successful school district.

Should Issue 18 pass, board members still serve 4-year terms. In the event that it was somehow deemed that in spite of being in the bottom 3% of districts in spending per pupil, the district, overseen by the board, was somehow demonstrating a lack of financial responsibility, the community could just elect a new board. The mechanism for accountability remains the ballot box. The continuing levy is only as permanent as the board and community deem it. If at some point the community wants to change the system, the board retains the power to introduce an alternate funding plan, which could simply be a return to the way we do it now. The risk of passing Issue 18 and eliminating the so-called accountability that comes with a renewal levy is basically benign compared to the catastrophic risk posed to us if a renewal levy actually failed.

Put another way, we spend so little on our kids that our renewal levy isn’t a tool that can effectively be used for accountability without destroying our system entirely in the process. The regular elections of our school board members provide our community with the ultimate means of accountability. Look back only a few years to see how a school board run amok will get sent home.

Issue 18 is a smarter approach to locally funding public education, even if our state system remains stuck in a mode of perpetual stupidity.

I believe Issue 18 improves the financial stability of our schools without increasing the tax burden on our community. I believe our schools are worth supporting because they are what makes our community strong. I’m voting for Issue 18. I encourage you to do the same.

To learn more about Issue 18 visit www.keepspringborostrong.org

I laughed and said it ain’t no big thing
I have a million ideas and most of them ain’t worth a thing
I understand that good things take time
and if something’s important you just have to keep on trying

I’ve been crazy, I’ve been blind, been lost and found so many times,
been down so low beneath the ground that darkness filled my eyes
after all that I’ve been through, life has taught me something true,
I know I got one thing right baby, that’s you

If losing was the way we kept score
I’d have broken all the recordsand I’d still be adding some more
I’ve failed more times than most ever try
just pick myself off the floor and start it again one more time