Who is to blame?

This evening I was involved in a candidate forum for the League of Women Voters of Hays County. As I was laying in bed reflecting on what I did wrong, because you know, that is the easiest thing for us to do, something became crystal clear to me.

Our school district is performing poorly. There really is no debate about that; we are below Texas average in most metrics, except funding per student. So what is the fix?

I started thinking about it from the lowest denominator.

• The child fails in school, who do they blame?
• Who does the parent of that child blame?
• Who does the teacher of that child blame?
• Who does the principle blame?
• Who does the superintendent blame?
• Who does the school board blame?
• Who does the community blame?

So what became clear to me, is we are all so quick to blame one of the other people on that list. A parent might blame the child, or the teacher, or the school administration. The teacher might blame the child or the parents or the school administrator. The superintendent might blame the child, the parents, the teachers, or the school board. I think you get my point.

So who is to blame? I bet if I posed this as a question, I would get a million different answers. To me, the crystal clear answer is to look in the mirror. If we continue to blame someone else for our problems, then they will never get fixed. Knowing the answer is the easy part. The hard part is walking the path to a solution. Let’s stop blaming the other person and start taking some accountability.