Only several hours of space remain until this evening’s 7 o’clock School Board meeting at the School District’s offices.
Prof. Kelly Kent and Anne Burke will be sworn in and – there is a temptation to say: Laura Chardiet and Nancy Goldberg will be sworn out. At least they will step down, voluntarily, as last month’s election winners are seated.
At lunch time, Dr. Kent was asked if she is ready.
Two smiles later, she replied.
“I have done a lot of meeting and preparation and thinking,” Dr. Kent said. “I have tried my very best to be as ready as I can be.
“But no, I am not ready. I definitely am working very hard to be as prepared as possible.
“But there is no way. The learning curve is enormous and deep. I am working diligently and being humble.”
The most challenging dimension of the preparation process, said the neuroscientist, “is trying to decide what my baby, or babies, will be in the early part” of her term.
Then she became the affable, magnetic Kelly Kent who won over voters during her summer/autumn campaign.
“I can’t start being a pest or a bull in a china shop,” she said, not that those things would be called for.
“But from a question standpoint, I have so many questions.
- “What is the meaning of this.
- “I don’t understand the terminology.”
“A lot of jargon and a lot about finances is unfamiliar,” Dr. Kent said.
She had all afternoon to bridge the gap.
