I had to read the story about the Redmond High School chess club a couple times before thinking: This IS a joke, right? Four fantastic chess players traveling to a national tournament will be refused the opportunity to compete under their school name and town. It seems that through some oversight a 90-day (NINETY DAY!) advance application for a school chaperone was missed. Therefore the kids who worked for thousands of hours perfecting their game will be disallowed the pride and privilege of representing Redmond High. The reason given was basically that some school district administrator is wrapped around the axle on “policy,” instead of taking steps to make things right.

As a Redmond taxpayer with more than 50 years in the private sector, may I offer two potential solutions? One is called “common sense,” and the other is known as “initiative.” Here is how they work:

When a clash of necessity and policy occurs, the use of common sense would immediately realize that an unfortunate situation was about to develop. The question would be — do we hide behind a foot thick policy manual, or do we grab the situation by the stacking swivel and eliminate or find a way around the obstacle? Once common sense has pointed the way, we turn to initiative.

Someone in that school district should be blasting out emails and burning up the phone lines to get to the person or people who have the authority to get results. Maybe it’s the superintendent, perhaps the school board or even the phalanx of attorneys who must be on retainer to oppose the ridiculous demands of helicopter parents, or deal with the few bad seeds who turn up as students.

The information given in the article makes it seem like finding a school employee to serve as a chaperone takes a minimum of 90 days. This is ridiculous on its face. A school district that can afford to demolish perfectly good buildings and replace them with “cathedrals” can certainly find a couple teachers who would gladly clock a little overtime and enjoy the trip. Money cannot possibly be the problem; any district accountant with a half a brain could find an appropriate fund to legally draw a few bucks from. The real problem is attitude and negative inertia.

We read stories often about some kid who bites a cookie into an “L” shape, points it across the lunch table and says “bang!” Suspended for bring a gun to school! A kindergartner pecks a girl he likes on the cheek. Suspended for sexual harassment! A high school friend gives her pal with a headache an aspirin. Suspended for a drug violation! A first-grader gets a Mohawk to mimic a school coach and gets suspended for distracting the class. Such lunacy is indeed running rampant in schools across the country. It is PC gone mad, turbocharged by administrators without a whit of common sense, personal courage, nor initiative.

Would someone in the Lake Washington School District please step in and sort this bad case of the policy vapors out — and get these great kids a chaperone for their trip?

Jeffrey S. Howard

Redmond