This is a message to Addison Central School District voters that you elect Ron Makleff to a Middlebury seat on the ACSD board.

Ron Makleff is a father of a preschooler, he is an educator, and he is a human rights activist. He is a lifelong believer in, and a product of, public education. As a trained historian, he has taught in his native California and elsewhere at the collegiate, high school and middle school levels. His engagement with local communities is deeply rooted in his academic work, which deals with local power and resistance against centralization in medieval European communities. That work has taken him from Occupied East Jerusalem, where he taught English, to Berlin, to Berkeley, and to Middlebury, where he just finished teaching his first winter term course. He has attended the University of California San Diego, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, La Sapienza University in Rome, and has a Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley. Ron’s wife teaches at Middlebury College.

Ron became an activist in Israel-Palestine. While there, he helped accompany Palestinian children under attack from Israeli settlers to school; translated reports and collaborated in legal filings by human rights organizations such as the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and B’Tselem; and taught English in Occupied East Jerusalem.

Ron is running for the Addison Central School District board in order to support and improve Vermont’s commitment to public education. He hopes to help the district improve student learning outcomes and equality of opportunity, to build a more accountable and transparent school board, and to make sure that all towns have a strong voice in their local communities and their schools.

We call on the voters of the Addison Central School District to elect Ron Makleff to the ACSD board. We cannot pass up this chance to have this accomplished and courageous educator on our board.

Millard and Laurie Cox

Ripton