Dareen Glaude, SCW columnist

Unlike others who regularly offer opinions here at Seminole County Watch, I have refrained from saying much about the high school rezoning battle between the School Board and the parents whose families' lives are being turned upside down as a result of the School Board's action.

Having watched the entire proceedings from a spot on the sidelines, I must say that my sympathies lie with the parents and students who will have to live each day the actual repercussions of a decision that has left the School Board members personally unaffected.

It is difficult not to sympathize when reading the comments they have left on Slats Murphy's blog, and the emails that have circulated, as well as the futile public comments they have made in an attempt to avoid what has seemed to become the unavoidable.

Those who know me are not surprised by where my sympathies lie.  I usually root for the underdog, especially when they are fighting against the seemingly insurmountable opposition of high-powered bureaucracy, as is the case here.

One of the comments that has been repeated most often has been the School Board mantra that the focus should be on what is good for the whole community rather than just one neighborhood, or a limited number of affected families.

After having heard that enough, my reflections led me to ask exactly what that meant.  What does it mean when the School Board says the rezoning plan they chose was good for the whole community, despite being at the expense of certain individuals.

To be honest, I do not think the whole community has been that particularly concerned.  For the most part, the community has displayed the typical apathy that exists for various reasons, including a tired sense of having been beaten down enough by the system.

It gets to the point where you do not even bother, because the system always wins.  In this case, though, the stakes were high enough for one community that they would not simply roll over and die.

That is what seems to be different about this particular situation, and why, to the School Board's obvious dislike, it refuses to go away.

The concept of community is an interesting one, and I wonder how the School Board defines it.  As an impartial observer not affected by this particular School Board decision, it has made me extremely fearful of those future School Board decisions that very well may affect me.

My definition of community must be very different from that of the members of the School Board, as must also be my definition of what is best for the overall community.  To my way of thinking, a community is a place where people exhibit a reciprocal caring and concern for one another, and work towards solving problems to mutual satisfaction.

Not necessarily to total satisfaction, but to mutual satisfaction.  A community values each of its members, and seeks to express that through its treatment towards one another.  When adverse actions are necessary, enough care is taken to mitigate the fallout to as large a degree as possible.

As an observer throughout this whole ordeal, I have seen a group of sincere parents whose continual efforts to work with the School Board have been ignored, if not overtly attacked, each time.

Even more importantly, I have seen a School Board that shows no concern for members of the same community for which it alleges to be primarily concerned.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but my whole understanding of this issue comes down to one neighborhood in Longwood being broken apart because the School Board says its children must attend different schools from one another. 

After having lived and grown with one another for much of their lives, the children's neighborhood roots are being ripped apart, all for the sake of some numbers on a spreadsheet that, as most spreadsheets do, actually means little in human or any other terms at the end of each day.

The School Board's sense of community is that to save the community you must uproot the community.  You know the concept:  to save the village you must destroy it. 

When our leaders asserted that to be the case in Vietnam, it was reflective of their presumptive arrogance of power.  It is no different coming from the School Board.  It smacks of disdain, if not contempt, for those whose lives are actually affected.

The community in which I live would have preferred the School Board to have kept one longstanding neighborhood intact, to allow its families to continue the sense of community they had developed over several decades of sharing and caring together, with their community school being the binding ingredient. 

To have such a small group bear the brunt of countywide rezoning in such measure and to such degree does not reflect the values of community held by the community in which I and many others live.

Yet the School Board members say it was absolutely necessary.  There was, incredibly, no other way.  After all, they had to serve the needs of the community. 

Obviously, when it comes to community, School Board members truly do hold a different view.

Email Darren at darrenglaude@seminolecountywatch.com