ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.

Dorr Township Trustee John Tuinstra recently circulated a flyer recommending trustee candidates for the Nov. 8 election. I’m doing the same on a larger scale, prompted by my motto: “I report what I see and hear, and sometimes I comment on it.”

Journalism has a tradition of more than 200 years of endorsing candidates for office. Yes, it’s just one man’s opinion.

Wayland Board of Education:

I often feel sorry for people who run for school board seats these days. The State of Michigan, ever since Proposal A of 1994, has been stripping away powers of governing schools from local officials. The State Legislature also has been slowly, but effectively, starving public schools while supporting charter schools and private schools.

The formula is to defund public schools and set them up to fail, privatize, aid private education and then point figures at the failed system that sets the table for the for-profit corporate takeover of education. It’s called “Starve the Beast.”

The state’s usurping of public education has been so effective that two years ago Wayland had only one candidate file for three open seats and this year Martin has only one for two posts. Hopkins has two for two.

Wayland was fortunate this year to have five seek four open posts. Three are incumbents, Theresa Dobry, Tom Salingue and Gary Wood. Two are newcomers, Cinnamon Mellema and Dan Cassini.

Longtime board member Nancy Thelen decided to step down this year.

Dobry and current board President Salingue have worked hard, but have not distinguished themselves. It’s not their fault that public education continues to slip into the clutches of the private sector, but they’ve done little if anything to even recognize what’s happening.

Mellema and Cassini both bring fresh perspectives and already have shown better than an average willingness to become involved in activities on behalf of the Wayland Union school district. Cassini is a football coach and Mellema is perhaps the most qualified to be a board member besides Toni Ordway, who came on board two years ago.

All of them, I am certain, are supportive of some kind of a bond issue in 2017 to handle prospects for population growth. All will face a skeptical public on issues of spending and the differences between needs and wants in a bond proposal.

The current board already is wrestling with possibilities of proposing a smaller economic package and scaling back on ambitious projects, which may doom prospects of building a new pool. The work ahead will be difficult.

I endorse the candidacies of promising newcomers Mellema and Cassini and the experience of Dobry and Salingue.

I will not endorse incumbent Gary Wood because it seemed to me he engineered the loathsome “team player” coup three years ago of former President Jeff Salisbury. The in-house, behind the scenes overthrow of Salisbury rebuked him for his audacity to dissent. In this country, we should encourage everyone to discuss differences and vote our consciences, but Wood and a complicit remainder of the board insisted on everyone marching in lock step and punish someone who was not.

As George Orwell said so eloquently once, “Freedom is the right to say no.” Apparently that definition was lost on the board.