2/8/05 -- When Major Brad Letner returns from his tour of duty in Afghanistan in a few weeks, he is looking forward to returning to his family and a civilian life -- and also to his position as a school board member with the Adelanto Elementary School District in San Bernardino County, Calif.
Letner had been in the process of resigning from the Army, but requested a reserve commission after 9/11.
Stationed in Kabul, Letner is deputy director for logistics operations in the Office of Military Cooperation. His primary duty is to plan and oversee military equipment donated to Afghanistan worth over half a billion dollars.
He assists the director in supervising a staff of eight officers and non-commissioned officers -- including a captain from Romania -- in helping the Afghan National Army with all facets of logistic support, which has another $100 million annual budget.
“As a school board member and 12-year Army veteran, I am familiar with managing taxpayer money, although these amounts are new territory for me,” Letner says.
“The sights and sounds of Kabul are unlike anything most Westerners have witnessed,” Letner reports. “The ravages of almost 30 years of war are obvious. Bombed out buildings are everywhere.”
“Many are from the original attack of the Soviet Union,” he says. “Many more are from the mujahideen pushing the Soviets out and the civil war that followed until the rise of the Taliban, and the most recent are from U.S. bombing and the Northern Alliance offensive that retook the capital and overthrew the Taliban.”
The streets of the capital are always crowded during the day, he says, mostly with yellow cabs and colorfully decorated “jingle” trucks painted with bright scenes and with beads and flowers hanging from the bumpers.
There are also huge Toyota Land Cruisers bearing staffs from the United Nations, European Union, International Security Assistance Force, non-governmental organizations, and the United States, Letner says. “Sprinkled in the mix are people on foot, people pushing and pulling carts, riding bicycles, driving horse-drawn carts, and quite often driving small flocks of sheep or goats from one grassy area to another to graze.”
Letner has toured a few schools in Kabul, including a state-of-the-art high school built by the Germans that is “nicer than at least half the schools in my community.”
“But that is one of a kind here in Kabul,” he says. “More typical is the last one I visited before Christmas to deliver gifts and school supplies donated by friends from the United States.
One of that school’s four buildings was “bombed out and unusable,” and another building was heavily damaged. Classrooms were crowded, with at least 30 to 40 students packed in, often sharing desks.
“Our community service visit threatened to turn into a free-for-all ‘survival of the fittest,’” Letner recalls. “The larger kids crowded the smaller ones from the gifts until the instructors (all male in this society) regained order with several smacks on the head and shoulders with thin sticks and rulers.”
Letner hired a tutor to help him learn the local language, Dari, which is closely related to Farsi. The tutor is a teacher who earns $200 a month, less than half of the $500 monthly salary his son earns as a custodian on the Army base.
“Being here has left me with a much greater appreciation for the blessings we enjoy as Americans,” Letner says. “It has also impressed upon me the absolute necessity of a strong education to build hope and to build the future -- both on the individual and societal level. I am more strongly committed than ever to be a part of innovative solutions to improve our students’ performance.”
When Letner returns to the states, he’ll go back to his regular job as a civilian program analyst for the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, Calif.
While in Kabul, Letner retained his seat on the Adelanto school board. He can’t vote from Kabul, but he does receive e-mail notifications about board activities.
“Because of the Brown Act in California, I’m very limited in being able to provide feedback, but I have been able to communicate with the superintendent and other staff members about issues of importance,” he says. The Brown Act requires that all deliberations take place in a public meeting.
“Because of my one-year deployment, a bill was introduced by state Rep. Sharon Runner to increase school boards’ flexibility to appoint temporary members to fill the seat of school board members absent for military service,” he says. The measure was signed into law.
A Defense Department directive on political activities of active duty military personnel issued last summer says officers activated for more than 270 days must vacate their school board seats. Board members can take a leave of absence if allowed by state law. Enlisted reservists and members of the National Guard, however, can retain their school board positions.
Letner is not the only school board member engaged in the war on terrorism. Stanley King, a member of the board of Central Consolidated Schools in Shiprock, N.M., and a munitions specialist with the Air National Guard Reserves, returned from Iraq this fall.
National Guard member William Gates, a member of the school committee for the Minuteman Vocational Technical High School, which serves 16 communities in Massachusetts, will leave for Iraq soon.
Board member killed in Iraq
The community of Loyal, Wis., is mourning school board member Todd Olson, who was killed in Iraq while serving as a staff sergeant with the Wisconsin National Guard. Olson, 36, died Dec. 27 as a result of injuries sustained when he was hit with an explosive device while walking at the front of a foot patrol in a dangerous neighborhood in Samarra.
He is survived by a wife and four children, ages 5 to 17. In addition to serving on the Loyal school board since April 2003, Olson was vice president and an agricultural loan officer at M&I bank, a youth football coach, and was active in community and business groups.
When Olson left for training, he offered to resign from the school board. But the board agreed to keep him on as an inactive member, a practice allowed under state law, says Superintendent Graeme Williams. Olson had expected to resume his seat on the board after returning from Iraq. Instead, there was a memorial service at Loyal High School, drawing more than 1,000 mourners.