We recently accompanied some of our delivery drivers on their weekly routes, and we were surprised how hard it was to locate some residences during the evening or early morning hours when the deliveries take place. Many newer houses have street numbers that are backlit with bright bulbs, which makes it easy to find the right house, but many of the homes in the Valley were built 20 or 30 years ago, before that became commonplace.
So while we could get quickly to the right section of the street, it sometimes took a few minutes to find the correct house, and we hesitate to think what those few minutes might mean had we been an EMT crew responding to a medical emergency call – a few minutes could be the difference between life and death. Even reflective numbers on the mailbox or on a fence post by the driveway would be helpful. This costs only a few dollars at Friedman’s Home Improvement, but it might save those precious minutes.
True, there’s something attractive about the idea that we’re a rural community and don’t need illuminated numbering, but when we expect urban-level responses by ambulance, fire or police, we do ourselves a favor, perhaps a vitally important one, by installing and preferably lighting house numbers large enough to be legible from the street at all hours.

Dim bulbs II

As our students get ready to return to school next week, the local school board is getting back to work as well. During public comment at the board’s regular meeting last Tuesday, Rich Gantenbein, long-time pastor at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church and mentor of a middle school student, reminded the board that the district is failing to educate its graduating students, backing that assertion with a simple handout showing how few of our students actually are “proficient” in subject material, based on data from the state. Whether in U.S. history, math or English, as the examples on the handout, it was only about half – which means that half of the students CANNOT do grade-level work, in the best case, and in some cases, the number of proficient students drops to only about one in six.
Alarming statistics, these, and a sure sign of the need for change. Fortunately, the five trustees all exude a positive willingness to consider and direct change. As Gantenbein said, it’s not enough just to “rearrange the deck chairs” when the ship is sinking. One trustee is fond of pointing out that doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is the definition of insanity. We agree – our schools can’t keep doing the same things and expecting better results.
The district’s mission statement is, “We do what it takes to build pathways to success for every student.” Some have suggested that there is, in fact, little wrong with the existing pathways but that many of the students are simply too dull to follow them. Surely that’s not what the administration thinks, and we see flickers of hope in two recent developments.
First, the apparent success of the new preschool program launched last year at El Verano Elementary School suggests that students from families considered “SED,” that is, socially and economically disadvantaged, can indeed perform well. Second, the restructuring being planned for the high school next year opens the opportunity for forming a “high expectations academy” there, literally to reshape the future for SED students willing to work hard.
In our view, all of Sonoma’s children have the capacity for success; few things are more vital to our future as a community and as a nation than their sound education.