Political Action- School Boards

I'm thinking that I should devote more of my thought to practical political action at a more local level.  In the past, my posts here have covered more broad, abstract concerns.  I start off with some abstract points, justifying this change in approach and then move on to some very concrete course of action, albeit one that could be applied in many different locations.

It does no good to support a cause that is certain to succeed.  It would do so without your effort.  Likewise it does no good to support a cause that is certain to fail.  It will do so despite your best efforts.  The cause that you are most likely to influence is one that has a roughly 50% chance of success.  Local causes are much easier to influence.  You don't need to persuade as many people, and the people you need to persuade are all local.

Most people spend a majority of the attention that they devote to political maters looking at the highest level of government.  This might make sense if you live in a swing state.  However, I do not.  The election could go either way, but the Republicans have very little chance of getting a majority in Washington in the next presidential election.  Hence the Democrats are almost certain to obtain our electoral vote.  The incumbent Senator and Representative in Congress are both Democrats and almost certain to be re-elected.

I have been participating in the local organized freethought movement for about five months.  Most of the people who attend meetings are politically left of center.  There are people who think that it is important to support Barack Obama and oppose the Republicans.  Then there are those who think that Barack Obama hasn't gone far enough.  Occasionally we run into the odd Ron Paul supporter.  The political action of the movement seems to consist largely of reading books about politics.

It seems to me that the ideal form of political action for the group is to encourage involvement and inform group members about local school boards.  Toward that end I have constructed a spreadsheet that has links to the websites of various school boards in the area, their addresses with links for directions, and meeting times.  The link above was to the published version.  The generating document is here.

You can feel free to copy and adapt the document for your own area.  Notice that columns A and B are hidden.  If you click on the triangle on the left side of the top of column C, then they will both be visible.  Column A has the names of the various districts.  Column B has links to their websites.  You will notice that at the bottom of the sheet I have placed "edit" in Column A and a link to the generating document in Column B.  This enables anyone who is viewing the published version to access the generating document in order to make whatever changes they deem appropriate.  If you wish to copy my spreadsheet and adapt it for some other area, you will want to change or remove this feature so that you link to your generating document rather than mine(or link to neither depending on your preference).  Please copy the address of your copy of my spreadsheet and paste it at the bottom of column B.

Similarly columns G and H are hidden.  Column G contains the address of each school board.  Column H contains a link to that address on google maps.  Columns C and I put the information from these hidden columns together.  Taking the text from the first and the link from the second of the two columns to their left.

I have made it so that anyone who accesses these documents can change them.  I retain a private copy of my work in case I need to change this policy.