The Radical Center

Listening to State of the Reunion just yesterday, I heard a story of cattle ranchers and environmentalists that were able to recognize mutual interest and act on it productively. These traditional enemies found that they are both interested in insuring the borderlands are both a productive resource and a preserve of nature. Turns out that the ranchers helping nature helps the ranchers and their cattle.

A key turn of phrase caught my ear: the radical center. It was described as the place that the Malpai Borderlands Group wanted to occupy, between the "pointy toed boots" and the "birkenstocks". The traditional positions of one or the other only saw victory in either unfettered grazing or pristine preservation. Everyone lined up on one side or the other. Turns out pulling together from the center was a radical approach, and produced novel and useful solutions.

I don't have to spell out that we're a highly polarized community of parents. How can we approach the center and pull together to bring in the fringe towards our common cause? How can we re-center on education instead of resource competition?

How did it all start for you?

I work developing software systems, more specifically I assess the level of quality of those systems. I've worked on any number of complex systems that all love to go wrong in interesting ways, some subtle and some glaring. The best possible outcome is that bugs or operational weaknesses are flushed out in the development and testing environments, but it's impractical to catch 100% of all possible problems there. After a production failure, I look at what the problem was, how it was detected in production and how we can prevent similar problems in the future by detecting them before they're in front of customers. This kind of root cause analysis is common across many engineering disciplines.

We've had recurring themes since the initial bond measure that passed and was followed by the closing of the Bullis Purissima campus which was followed by the formation of the charter school which was followed by everything else. However, I don't have a clear picture of root causes.

I'd like to try an exercise here. Every one of us has our own perspective on who was wronged by who and when, and what responses resulted. I'd like to crowdsource a catalog of all the offenses and construct a timeline that we might be able to use for a root cause analysis of just where this whole process went sideways.

My hope is that once we know how we got here, it might illuminate a path for getting to a more amiable place. If you want to contribute in the comments, feel free. If you want to contribute semi-anonymously, send me email at rob(dot)fagen(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll add your data to the thread.