Somehow Kickaha, a magical foxyote trickster, has become president of the school board..
Kickaha Vs the Board of Education
By CalexTheNeko
There was a knock at the door of Kickaha’s burrow. The rust and white colored foxyote was still asleep in bed and awoke with a start at the sound. He had not been expecting company today. Of course, the fact he wasn’t expecting it meant he should have known someone was bound to come. Either way he roused himself from his sleep and got out of bed as the impatient visitor continued to knock.
“I’m coming!” Kickaha yawned. He walked over to his closet and opened it up revealing a rack full of green cloaks. Some people might have thought this to be some sort of gag. In truth, it was just with friends like his cloaks had a tendency to go missing due to the occasional small misadventure. And he liked his cloak so had created backups with the same enchantments just in case. Besides, he couldn’t be expected to wear the exact same one every day. That’d be gross and even he had to do laundry.
After Kickaha threw one of his signature cloaks on he made his way out towards the living room. The impatient knocking continued and Kickaha made an effort to slightly slow down his walk with each additional knock. Who was it going to be this time anyway? None of his friends, they might drop in unannounced, often literally, but weren’t rude. Hopefully it wasn’t another salesman. After the last one had somehow sold him two vacuums despite living in a burrow Kickaha was a bit more weary of them. He might have to go back to his room and pretend not to be home. Or turn the salesman into a chipmunk. One of the two.
Kickaha finally felt as if he had run out of ways to delay answering the door just to annoy the visitor. It was time to get this over with. He opened the door and saw he had not one, but five visitors standing outside his burrow. Three women and two men, all of them dressed in business suits. Having a group of stern looking people show up sharply dressed on your doorstep was never a good thing. Was it the IRS, because he didn’t pay taxes? He didn’t have an income and lived in the woods. He was pretty sure that made him exempt. Maybe they were federal agents who wanted to talk about several criminals who had gone missing right as the local zoo got new exhibits. Or maybe it was something even worse. They might have been here to talk about religion.
The actual reality was much more worse, and so strange that not even Kickaha saw it.
“Kickaha.” One of the women stepped forward holding a clipboard with a paper on it. She squinted as she looked down at the clipboard. “Of the Art? Congratulations, you’ve been elected as head of the state school board.”
“What?” Kickaha would like to think there were very few things that could surprise him at this point. Oh there were ‘surprises’ like suddenly finding yourself pocket sized because your friend had to touch the shiny thing, but those were the expected kind of surprises. This? This was the type of thing that simply didn’t happen. Kickaha was actually stunned into silence. It was a very rare event, and most of the other times it had happened were a result of being rendered into a form physically unable to talk. After his brain slowly processed the information and took in the full meaning of it, Kickaha gave the best response he could muster in the meantime. “What?” He repeated.
“Yes, it would seem you won the election by a landslide.” The woman with the clipboard glared at him. “Despite not being active during the race or one of the frontrunners at any point.”
“For the third time I repeat, what?” Kickaha stared at her.
“You’ll be in charge of overseeing the curriculum for all schools in the state, general policy, funding decisions, transportation options, food partnerships for the cafeterias, everything.” The woman did not seem pleased to give him this information. “You’re the head of all of it.”
“Okay, I realize that perhaps I’ve been asking the wrong question.” Kickaha took a deep breath. “How did this happen?”
“Well…” One of the men spoke up. “It would seem a few months back you somehow became an official member of the school board. No one is 100% sure how it happened, but the paperwork was in order along with the forms you approved for a grade school field trip.”
“Oh… yes. That.” Kickaha remembered sneaking into the school to deliver a few forged papers. There had been no ill intent. He had simply been helping a friend out with their educational project. “So… Why does that make me president?”
“Well as a member of the school board when elections came about you were eligible to run.” The man explained. “And despite no one knowing who you were… You got the most votes.”
“That seems contradictory.” Kickaha crossed his arms. “How did I win an election I didn’t participate in, in which no one even knew who I was?”
“It’s because no one knew you that you won.” The first woman spoke again. “Between petty grudges, and disagreements over policies, literally every candidate was hated by the majority and agreed upon to be the worst candidate. I don’t know how five people can all be considered the worst at the same time… But no one knew you, and so know one had any reasons to hate you.”
“Okay that checks out.” It was within the line of behavior Kickaha had seen with humans before. He also realized the five people before him were likely the five candidates he had beaten out. No wonder they looked so stern. “But for the record, before this goes any further. I want to verify one thing. Everyone standing here right now is aware that this is a terrible idea. Right?”
“Yes.” All five answered at the same time.
“Ok, glad we’re on the same page.” Kickaha spun around swishing his tail. “Let me just grab my briefcase and I’ll get started on this.” He paused as he considered a small problem. “Where does the school board actually meet up, and during what hours?”
“I’ll email you directions and schedules.” The curt woman replied.
“But-” Kickaha looked around his burrow. It may have been decorated like a house but it was still a hole dug in the ground. It didn’t exactly come with all the amenities. “You know what, it’s fine. That works.”
Even under the current circumstances, Kickaha couldn’t help but feel an extra tingle of foreboding. Handling lights and plumbing through magic was one thing. Simple gadgets like vacuum cleaners…still workable. But computers? Computers were the pinnacle of science and order. They relied on the laws of physics being just right, on reality being on its best behavior. The odds of a laptop behaving sensibly in a trickster mage’s burrow were… well, roughly the odds of a foxyote accidentally being elected to the presidency of a school board. But Kickaha just couldn’t bring himself to lecture five strangers on Intermediate Chaotic Physics Variations this early in the morning.
And he had an ace in the hole.
“Good then, give me your address and we’ll see you on Monday.” The woman passed the clipboard over to Kickaha and a pen to write with. Kickaha quickly filled in his email address and then made a mental note to actually make an account with that address as soon as these people were gone. “Very well, see you Monday.” With that all five of them turned and walked away from the burrow.
“So this is a thing that’s happening now.” Kickaha rubbed the back of his head. Him in charge of all the schools? Sure, he was technically a teacher in the sense he had a student he was training. But that was with one person in one specialized art. He felt out of his league… At least until he remembered one simple fact. “You know what, there’s no possible way for me to break the education system anymore than it already is.” With the realization that it was impossible to be worse than any of the previous people with this job Kickaha felt a little confidence. He went to his room and got out a notepad and a pencil and began to write down a few notes. He was going to want some talking points when he went in on Monday.
Oh right, and he probably better take care of that email thing too. There was, for lack of a better term, a vault in the corner of Kickaha’s bedroom. It wasn’t the traditional kind you might think of, like a safe you might see in a hotel room. It was roughly the same shape and size though. Just, instead of having a combination dial on it, there were a circle of colorful runes representing the fifteen different sealing spells keeping the vault shut. Originally, Kickaha only had four seals on it. But after he came home one day to find his burrow upside down, with each doorway leading to the wrong room and a magic book floating in the air with a face in it screaming about chaos and darkness, Kickaha had decided that it was time to get serious. He was all for chaos, but that didn’t mean you had to make a mess of someone’s house.
Kickaha slowly undid each seal and then he opened the top of the box. Shrieks and roars erupted from within the box and a pair of claws clambered for the edge of the box trying to climb out.
“No! Bad!” Kickaha grabbed a newspaper from his nightstand, rolled it up and slapped the clawed hand. “You know better.” With that taken care of he dipped the upper half of his body into the box to try to find what he was looking for. The inside was of course bigger, but the box was less a container and more a portal. A pocket reality for Kickaha to store a few special belongings that simply weren’t safe enough to keep laying around the house, or even in the storage closet. An ancient looking grimoire floated past him in one direction, followed by a game of Monopoly in the opposite. Then… There it was! A jet black colored laptop floating between the vorpal blade and a genie lamp. There was no genie inside the lamp, Kickaha wasn’t that cruel. Technically it was his own lamp from an old scheme, but he didn’t like to think about that. For now he grabbed the laptop and pulled it out, then put all the sealing charms back up.
“Okay, easy enough…” Kickaha went to the kitchen and sat the laptop on the table. He grabbed the power cord and shoved it into the dirt before casting a simple spell to generate electricity. Then he hit the power button. And it came on! SUCCESS!
“CURRRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSED!” A monstrous face on appeared on the laptop as it booted up. It had glowing red eyes and a fanged mouth. “You who have attempted to use this device shall now know suffering for all-“ The face on the laptop stopped talking for a moment and looked up at Kickaha. “Oh it’s you.”
“Hey Pear.” Kickaha smiled as the face flinched. The demon within the computer did not like being called by his true name. It could be used to control him. But worse, it was embarrassing. “Sorry to bother you. I just need to check my email for a moment.” Kickaha paused. “And make an email address too.”
“You dare to call upon a daemon from the blackest depths for the mundane task of checking email?” Pear asked.
“Um yeah, I thought I was pretty clear on that.” Kickaha gave the demon computer a blank stare.
“Fine. Whatever. So… Is there a Wi-Fi network I can connect to or are we using a landline?” Pear tried to glance around but he couldn’t see anything beyond what the screen was facing.
“Neither.” Kickaha shrugged.
“What? Did you think you could just connect to the Internet through magic?” Pear demanded.
“That’s the plan,” Kickaha stated matter-of fact. “I mean, it’s either that or I call the cable company.”
The daemonic laptop’s screen went pale. “You would hand me over to… THEM? You’re more wicked than I thought.”
“So let’s get creative.”
And they did.
By the time Monday rolled around, Kickaha felt he was ready. He knew the location of the school board building and to be there by 9 A.M. He got his cloak on, grabbed a brief case and set out. He arrived a few minutes early to be punctual, but as he walked into the tiled lobby a tired looking security guard stopped him.
“Uh, excuse me.” The security guard tried to stop Kickaha. “No animals allowed.”
“I think an exception is in order since I’m president of the school board.” Kickaha smiled smugly.
“Uhhhh.” The security guard seemed unsure about this and Kickaha was forced to wait as he went back to his station and made a phone call. So much for being early. After being kept waiting for several minutes the guard came back, apologized and waved him through.
“Thank you.” Kickaha rolled his eyes. He was less annoyed with the guard and more that whoever was running this place apparently failed to provide employees with basic information.
Wait. He was the one running this place now. Okay, put that on the list of things to fix.
“Uh, Mr. Of the Art?” The security guard asked, having apparently gotten Kickaha’s full name and title over the phone call. “Sorry to bother you again just… It’s your tail… You are aware it is on fire yes?”
“Hmmmm?” Kickaha looked over his shoulders, and indeed a small part of his tail was burning. “Oh I thought I had put that out.” He quickly conjured a pitcher of water and applied it to the flames. “Sorry about that, but my attempts to access your email system produced some explosive results.” With that the foxyote, no longer on fire, walked past a very confused security guard, down the hall and to the meeting room.
Thanks to the delay, Kickaha was last to arrive. Everyone else was sitting around a round conference table, one that was taller than the three foot tall foxyote. It looked like the seat at the end of the table was reserved for him. He climbed up into it, and found that the top of his head barely poked over the table.
“Okay, first order of business.” Kickaha spoke up to the gathered school board members. “We’re going to need a shorter table or a stack of phone books. But considering this modern age, I’m guessing the odds of having a stack of phone books around is pretty unlikely.”
“Mr. Of the Art.” Another member of the board started.
“Please just Kickaha. Just, the way you’re saying it, that’s not how it works.” Kickaha bristled.
“Okay, Kickaha.” The man continued. “We are the department of education. Everything we own became obsolete over ten years ago. Of course we have phone books.” The man pointed to a supply closet on the far side of the room.
“Well, that is useful.” Kickaha climbed down from his chair. “And also very, very depressing. Inside the closet Kickaha found phone books, as well as some abacuses, laserdisc players and a butter churn. “Okay, I think I’m going to need to make going over the budget a prime concern to see if we can update a few things.” He carried a stack of phone books over to the chair, sat them down and climbed up atop them. Now he could see everyone.
The five people from the other day were there and thanks to the nametags in front of their spots Kickaha now had names for all of them. The stern blonde haired woman who had done most of the talking was apparently named Susan. The other two women were both brunettes, one named Catherine and the other Janeen. Of the two men, the one who had spoken up the other day was named Eric, and the one who had remained silent was Tom. There were also several other people around the table, but most of them were too far away for Kickaha to read their nametags. It was a big conference table.
“Okay so…” Kickaha tapped his paw against the table. “What do we do now?”
“Well…” Susan spoke up. “We have several measures to vote on from dealing with an overinflated budget, new lunch menus and textbook and curriculum decisions. First up, I believe everyone here is already on board to this one. To save money, we’re going to have to cut the arts programs and let those teachers go.”
“Why?” Kickaha asked. “Isn’t there something else we could take the money from?”
“It is the least essential department, and does nothing to help pass the standardized tests.” Susan responded. “It’s the most logical choice.”
“Yeah I think I’m going to veto this.” Kickaha shook his head. “Do I have veto power?”
“Yes.” Janeen spoke up for the first time. Susan shot her a dirty look.
“Great, ok, everything you were all going to vote on today. All vetoed. Every last one.” Kickaha grinned.
“You haven’t even heard the other proposals!” Susan objected.
“I think I get the general idea.” Kickaha shrugged. “And we might still vote on them tomorrow. But… I think we’re going to adjourn for the day.”
“We just started the day.” Susan growled.
“Yes, but there are a lot of proposals that I haven’t had a chance to read yet. Strange, how if you could email me information you didn’t’ send any of these.” He gave a slight smile. “So, I’m going to spend the rest of the day reading over all of these proposals, going over the current state of affairs, and then we can vote on them tomorrow… But I may modify a few of them.”
“You think you know what’s best for the school system?” Susan laughed. “You can’t even dress yourself.” Oh yes, humans and their pants obsession.
“Forgive me if I care more about the students than impressing your small-minded opinion.” As Kickaha responded there were a series of whispers around the room, mutterings of ‘so that’s why everyone voted for him.’ ‘He cares about the students.’ “This meeting is over, leave all the paperwork so I can go over it.”
Most of the other members of the board cleared out pretty fast, Susan took slightly longer, making an act of dropping a giant stack of papers taller than Kickaha on the table.
“I look forward to seeing your suggestions tomorrow.” She grinned as she left.
“It’s like being in a den of snakes.” Kickaha considered the possibility for a moment. Then dismissed it. His full time job of being a karmic trickster would have to be put on hold until this was resolved. Besides, delivering karma didn’t include just dishing out punishments. It also meant giving rewards or help to those who needed it. And based on what he had seen so far, the students of this school system could definitely use a little help.
Of course, there was one problem. He eyed all the paperwork. This was a situation magic wasn’t going to get him out of. He was going to have to actually read all of it, and then he’d have to write his own versions of it. He grabbed the first pile of papers and began to read it then suddenly smiled.
“What do you know?” Kickaha grinned. “Turns out there’s another way to trim the budget.” He snickered to himself as he grabbed a pen and began to slowly cross out sections of each paper and write new things in. It would take all day and night, but he had an idea on how to fix a few things. “Hmmm, and how are they going to learn anything this way? A few curriculum changes are in order.” He continued to scribble late into the night.
The next morning Kickaha woke up with his face planted on the conference table. He realized he must have worked himself into exhaustion. But, it was worth it. He had gotten through the entire pile and made some suggestions and was looking forward to presenting them.
When the others arrived, they were surprised to see Kickaha had arrived before them. He decided not to inform them that he had accidentally spent the night here.
“Good news, I’ve gone over every provision, and while I’ve made a few modifications I believe they’re all ready for voting on.” He gave a predatory grin. “First up, cutting the arts program not only isn’t necessary, but I think we can restore a few old programs. I was going over the finances, and I’ve noticed that each member of the school board has received a significant raise around the same time the budget problems started.” Kickaha climbed up atop the table and stood up and placed a hand over his heart. “Naturally as educators we have a duty to make sacrifices for our students. So, cutting back our salaries to the previous levels will open up some other possibilities.”
“You can’t be serious?” Susan demanded.
“Quick question, these votes… Is who voted for what public knowledge if someone requests it?” Kickaha grinned, as he already knew the answer.
“Yes but what does that-“ Susan started and then her eyes widened as she saw Kickaha’s trap.
“So, this means that the information could be easily obtained by all parents on which members of the school board cut funding to their child’s education to give themselves a raise.” Kickaha walked in a circle along the table. “Now, I understand we work hard for our money, but you might want to consider what that’s going to look like come the next election. So… Who wants to cut funding to the school board to pay for programs?”
The room was silent for a few minutes as each member of the board did the mental math of trying to figure out what was best in the long run. But Kickaha’s threat was pretty clear. Their chances of reelection to the board would become zero if they didn’t go along with it. Slowly each member of the board put their hand up agreeing to the provision. Soon Susan was the only one who hadn’t.
“I abstain.” Susan muttered as she sat back in her chair.
“Great!” Kickaha smiled. “Now that opens a lot of options for projects we can do with the schools and I’ve got a lot of proposals. I’ve noticed that a lot of our mathematics curriculum is lacking in practical applications. We teach them the formulas to pass a test, but not how to actually use them.”
“Well the test determines how much funding we get.” Susan replied.
“Understandable to be concerned about this, but consider this, if the student is only learning it for the test how many will retain it? And how much will they understand it if they never apply it? Plus, different students learn different ways, so differentiating learning strategies will increase the odds of more students passing the test. You can find the details on the proposal I wrote up.”
“Um.” Eric spoke up. “This says something about the students and flying squirrels and trajectories?”
“Yes, it’s a practical experiment to teach the math involved in physics. Essentially, each of them will be given the variables and try to solve where they’ll land when they glide from the tree to the ground, they’ll see how far they were off, and can give it another shot. I have several other experiments like this lined up, just giving them a chance to learn things like calculating angles, velocity and-“”
Eric interrupted. “How are we bringing squirrels into the schools? Do we even have an approved vendor for squirrels?”
“It’s not that hard to understand. The students are the squirrels.” Kickaha put his hands on his hips. “Don’t worry, I know a guy, get the potions super cheap, they last 40 minutes so less than one period. And we can send them into a locker room to get ‘changed’ before they start.
“So… It’s more of a mental experiment?” Tom asked.
“I mean they’ll be doing mental work but they’re going to actually be squi-“ Kickaha didn’t get to finish.
“Mental experiments are a fine idea.” Catherine spoke up. “Especially since they have no cost. I vote to approve.”
“Ok, thanks, I appreciate the support but I don’t think you-“ Kickaha again didn’t get to finish as everyone around the room voted their approval. Even Susan. “Well okay then.” With that passed Kickaha couldn’t help but wonder how long it’d take them to catch on to what just got approved. Well, it was certainly going to be interesting for the teachers and students.
“I have questions about this proposal…” Tom spoke up. “You want to send every foreign language class on a field trip to a country that speaks their language.”
“Well yeah…” Kickaha sat down on the table. “I mean that seems a pretty obvious necessity. They need a chance to soak in the language, and apply it.”
“That’s ridiculous! There’s no way we can afford it!” Susan slammed her hands on the table. “Even with your cuts.”
“Actually, with the proper arrangements it will barely cost anything at all.” Kickaha stood up again and drew a circle in the air. “Thanks to portals, we can have a transportation cost of zero.”
“Portals? I’ve not heard of that airline.” Janeen gave Kickaha a look.
“That’s because… They’re magic portals.” Kickaha gave her a blank stare. Then he remembered what he was dealing with. Humans, but only humans, adults. All of them were so convinced of what they knew to be true that even when facing a magical talking foxyote — a creature that should be biologically impossible — they still were not taking his proposals for their literal meaning. Instead, they did some mental gymnastics to convince themselves it had some other meaning. “The short of it is, with my powers there will be no cost to the transportation itself.”
“Oh, you have connections to an airline company?” Janeen sounded impressed.
“That’s not-“ Kickaha sighed and gave up. “Okay, as long as you understand it’s free.”
“And what of hotels, food, and the cost of entering exhibits?” Susan demanded.
“Turn to page two of that provision.” Kickaha walked back to his chair and grabbed his own paper. “A stray cat can get just about anywhere, and I’ve located shelters in each major city they can spend the night at in comfort and be fed. Those who want something tastier can go hunting themselves. As for the exhibits… Normally animals wouldn’t be involved… But if an adult cat leads a series of kittens through a museum people will be too busy recording it with their phones to kick them out.”
“What does any of that even mean?” Tom looked lost.
“Well…” Kickaha considered using Tom as a demonstration. His name was Tom! Tom cat! It was too perfect. It was so tempting… But there were so many things to get through if he had to stop and give a demonstration for every proposal they’d never finish. Perhaps tomorrow. “The students are cats, and the shelter gives them a place to stay and eat, and they get to explore the city for free.”
“Is this something where the shelter has spare rooms, and they’ll let the students stay if they help out?” Janeen sounded interested. “That’d be a pretty good arrangement. It’d save us money, and we could get community service hours for the kids.”
“Again you misunder-“ Kickaha didn’t get to finish before his proposal was approved. Kickaha suspected his own student was going to get a kick out of hearing how the school bureaucracy actually worked.
“Um, I have a question about the cafeteria changes.” Catherine raised a hand. “I agree with anything that helps cut cost, but serving rodent meat seems an excessive measure.”
“Look mice and rats are cheap, delicious and full of nutrients.” Kickaha leaped back up onto the table and tapped his paw impatiently against it. “It’s the perfect meal for a growing child.”
In unison, everyone voted no.
“I don’t suppose I can veto that?” Kickaha asked hopefully.
“You can only veto proposals that passed.” Catherine explained. “Since this never passed, it never goes to your desk to sign and veto.”
“Those poor students, forced to eat second rate meals.” Kickaha shook his head. “Well the least we can do is make sure they have real meat in their meals. Oh yes, humans are omnivores, so I guess vegetables as well… Which… Means I guess the current cafeteria program can stay as is.”
“Hey I’m looking at your arts program.” Tom looked down at a paper. “And I see most of the old programs are back, but, you added a new one simply called ‘The Art.’ What is that?”
“Magic.” Kickaha gave the simplest answer. “It’d be useful for the field trips and other projects if some of the students knew how to help out. At their age, in a classroom we’d keep it basic.” Kickaha was currently giving rather advanced lessons to his own student, but those were also one on one lessons. “But I imagine it’ll help quite a bit.”
“Magic?” Susan rolled her eyes. “So we’re going to teach them to be magicians? Pull rabbits out of their hats? What’s the use of that?”
“Well, they might wind up a rabbit in a hat…” Kickaha tried to explain.
“I think it’s alright.” Janeen interrupted. “The art programs are essentially electives, and a good way for students to learn to express themselves. Magic isn’t that different from drama if you think about it, and it would certainly make our school system unique. Even if it’s a little odd, it gives us a little charm. Besides, schools are trying all kinds of crazy things these days for programs. Who knows, we could be the start of a trend.”
“That would be interesting, and she’s right, it’s pretty similar to the drama department. I see no reason to oppose it.”
“That’s… Technically true actually.” If only because his student Tony, a magic user, was in the drama class. “This would be the point where I’d try to explain things more, but as you’re all going to speak over me anyway.” Everyone voted their approval. “Point proven, I’m just going to take my victory and move on.”
“That leaves just one proposal of yours left.” Susan frowned. “You’ve proposed replacing our school bus company with… And I quote ‘dragons?’
“Not the fire breathing type.” Kickaha assured them. This got a laugh from everyone. Kickaha enjoyed making people laugh, but that hadn’t been a joke.
“I haven’t heard of that company before, how much do they charge?” Eric asked.
“Well they’ll literally work for anything shiny. We’d practically be paying them just in shiny beads. Could maybe even use some student arts and crafts projects.”
“You don’t have to get poetic. You could have just said they’re cheap.” Susan snapped. “You already know we’re in favor of saving money.” This time Kickaha didn’t even bother to try. “But we’ve been using our current company for years. Think of how many people we’d put out of a job. Doesn’t that seem heartless.”
“Any drivers who wish to can stay on as dragons.” Kickaha explained. “And they can keep their original salary if they wish or take the new one.”
“I doubt any would go down to the lower pay grade.” Eric rubbed his chin.
“You’d be surprised. Dragons don’t really have to buy a lot, but they love shiny things.”
“You talk as if they’re literally dragons.” Tom laughed. “I love this guy, he has a sense of humor.”
“They are literally dragons.” Kickaha responded.
“You see what I mean!” Tom clapped.
“I wasn’t using the word literally metaphorically like most people do.” Kickaha paused. “By the way, add that to the Language Arts curriculum so people know what literally actually means.”
“It is important kids speak properly.” Catherine nodded. “Too many these days rely on their phones to communicate. I vote in favor of the new bus company and the language arts program changes.” A series of agreements rang out around the room.
“You know, they have to type and spell words on their phones right?” Kickaha tried. “I know they use shorthand but it’s not like cell phones are the source of all our kids’ problems these days.” Kickaha suspected the actual problem was people like the ones in this room.
“Are you suggesting we let them use their phones in class? That is unacceptable.” Susan chided Kickaha. “None of us will vote for that.
“That wasn’t what…” Kickaha put a paw to his head, walked back to the end of the table and jumped back onto his pile of phone books. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. I think we’ve gotten through everything. So… I guess we should adjourn, and I’ll start signing everything to make it official, and contacting people to make new arrangements.” Kickaha had to smile a little bit. He doubted he was going to remain in this position long, especially once the others were forced to come face to face with the actual truth of what was going to go down in the schools.
But in the meantime, some students would have their minds expanded, learn there was more to the world than they saw. He had saved quite a few programs from being cut. And given the board a healthy dose of fear of cutting programs to give themselves raises. And who knew, maybe some of the new programs he added would stick. Afterall, sometimes people saw it easier to maintain the status quo than try to fix what was broken. Not that Kickaha intended for anything to break. But it was nice that human apathy gave a very real chance of several of his changes staying in place.
“Well then, I guess with that, we’re done for the day. Meeting adjourned!” Kickaha paused as he looked around. “Why don’t I have a gavel? I feel like I should have a gavel to hit the table with when we end meetings.”
“We’re a school board, not a courtroom or congress.” Susan replied snidely.
“Fair enough, but I want one anyway. So that’s the first order of business tomorrow.” Kickaha grinned. “But don’t worry, I’ll pay for that out of my own pockets. It won’t affect the budget at all.” Kickaha allowed himself to daydream for a moment about what kind of enchantments he might be able to put on the gavel. Maybe whenever his last day came he’d arrange for a spell that turned everyone in the room into lemurs or something when the gavel struck the table. Or maybe he’d leave some kind of enchantment like that on it and leave it behind for the next person. So many choices.
But, he felt like he had made an actual difference today. And, while he again didn’t think he’d hold this position long. He could have some fun with it while it lasted. He was definitely turning Tom into a cat tomorrow.
“Well, see you all at tomorrow’s meeting.” Kickaha flashed a wide grin, and then got to work signing all the proposals to make them official.