It's been quite a while since I posted on this blog, and I wanted to follow up on one of our rebuilding plans that I had previously talked about. I had seen a plan I had proposed start to look like it wasn't going to work, and the plan seemed to get worse and worse by the day...

As it turned out, watching and waiting was the right strategy. Our town administrators, one in particular, worked really hard to find some way to fix the plan so that it would work. She was able to not only put the plan back on track from a budget perspective, but was also able to work our the "green space" issue. We'll be taking less homes, but all of the owners are willing sellers - no eminent domain issues to deal with. So there is a little less green space than we originally planned, but there will be more than enough for us to be able to run a quality program at that school site. I want to send her a big electronic hug, so I'll be emailing her a link to this site.

The key to this success was me doing what does NOT come naturally to me... Waiting and trusting. I needed to trust that she could work this out. I needed to trust that we'd get what we needed from an educational perspective. And I needed to trust that it WOULD work out.

I needed to wait so she could have the time to work out the details. I needed to wait so that I could let my own emotions calm regarding the issue. I needed to wait because "pulling the trigger" prematurely would have thrown the project into disarray. And the history of this particular site is littered with disarray over more than 10 years.

So in the end, I'm really glad that I decided to wait. I would not have done so had the majority of my colleagues not advised me to. I would not have done so had my administrator friend not asked me to wait. Listening to them was better than listening to my own instinctive alarm system.

So thanks Louise - you did a great job and I'm grateful!