To the Editor:

I am writing to encourage voters living in the Greenville School District portions of Rensselaerville and Westerlo to vote for David Finch and Maryah Mac Donald on Tuesday, May 20, from 1 until 9 p.m. in the elementary school cafeteria. And bring a friend!

If you have been waiting for an opportunity to act to resist the unraveling of our democracy, May 20th is your day.

David Finch is a seasoned, pragmatic incumbent and retired teacher who helped lead our school through the trying times of the pandemic with sensibility and respect.

Maryah Mac Donald has lots of board and leadership experience serving in Realtor associations stemming from her professional career. She also has two daughters in the district and offers a noticeably tempered, thoughtful voice in contentious times.

The other candidate, voters may remember from the race three years ago when he was defeated 2:1 in record turnout. This was following an incident in which the candidate and his associates had the sheriff serve the members of the school board at their homes with a personal lawsuit for the school’s enforcement of government health mandates: tinyurl.com/bucci22.

This year, Mr. [James] Bucci is running on an evangelical platform to change up the school’s curriculum — which is fundamentally not the role of the school board, or a construction business owner.

It’s a slippery slope to chaos if we don’t continue to hold the line on our public schools. The recent suggestion at the federal level that the president should have control over college accreditation is a grave concern.

It’s not hard to imagine a scenario, a few years down the road, in which a Greenville honors student from a working-class family is denied the opportunity to attend the state university because her parents can’t access the FAFSA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid] for a state college in a “blue” or “illegal” state.

The year after Mr. Bucci, our district defeated a conservative thinktank school choice writer seeking a seat on our school board. Make no mistake, the ruling elite conservative class is coming for our public schools at every level — and candidates like Mr. Bucci may not be their thought leaders, but are certainly their implements.

Democracy is fraying. Making sure our kids have a quality education is essential to the future of our society. The likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the ruling elite of the world — grabbing up resources like the White House, rare earth, Greenland, and Panama Canal — want us to be uneducated so when they row off with the lifeboat we haven’t noticed to stop them.

Our kids depend on us holding the line. This is a real “think global, act local” moment.

Show strength in numbers on school election day. Resist. Vote Finch and Mac Donald.

Sarah Rice

Rensselaerville