As school gets back in session this month, we encourage you to grab some milk and cookies, get real comfortable on the couch, figure out how to get YouTube working on your TV, and stream yourself some School Board meetings for your local school district.

We can hear complaints from your inner 14 -year-olds from here. BOOOORING!

But trust us when we say that we wouldn’t ask you to sit through bus garage improvement quotations, elementary school redistricting arguments, and mold abatement of the plenum above the locker rooms (well, hopefully not that…) for nothing. There are real issues afoot in many districts across the state and country. All it takes is a few people in a school district who think their views should be everyone’s views, and all of a sudden, teachers stop working any thought provoking reading into their curriculum, librarians have to militarize to defend everyone’s right to read, and kids start to hide things about themselves, like maybe their confusion about how “In God We Trust” ended up on our secular dollars.

Whether you have kids in school or not, we all want well-educated neighbors and an electorate that can think critically. And whether you are the type to speak up or the type to observe quietly, we think that watching or attending school board meetings is empowering—which is about the opposite of boring, if you really think about it!

So look up your school district’s website. See when and where your Board of Education meetings take place. Or—if you’d rather go the milk-and-cookies-in-your-pajamas route—see if your district is broadcasting their meetings on Zoom or YouTube. It’s like watching reality shows, but what happens on the show actually affects you and the people you know.

Now that is engaging television!