As a highly decorated former Boy Scout, I feel well-qualified to comment on its popular slogan, “Be Prepared,” and its implications for education.

[OK. Full disclosure. I made it to Second Class, somehow earned a “Swimming” merit badge, and was working diligently on “Cooking” at a Missouri Jamboree when I decided that living in sprawling tent cities in the steamy, tick-infested Ozarks woods with thousands of other grimy 11-year-olds wasn’t, well, fun. I can, however, still cook you a mean foil stew.]

But that slogan still resonates. And so does the talk that our scoutmaster, a wonderful, thoughtful man name Mr. Moncrieff, gave about it. He said that being prepared was good, but that he preferred the phrase: “Be Ready.”

Jump ahead to last summer, when our editor-in-chief, Glenn Cook, asked me to do a cover story called “Change Happens.” The idea was that, with all the changes confronting public schools -- from No Child Left Behind to the rapidly changing student demographics -- school board members will have to be prepared.

In doing the story, however, I realized that it was just as Mr. Moncrieff said: The most successful boards hadn’t simply learned to weather change -- to “be prepared,” in Scout jargon -- but they were truly “ready” for this change and were often initiating it and embracing it, despite the fact that all change involves discarding some time-honored traditions and habits and moving into the unknown.

As you can see, “Change Happens” is now up on our website (www.asbj.com). Also, check one of my best sources for the story, the Lighthouse Project of the Iowa School Boards Foundation. (Go to www.ia-sb.org and click on “Member Benefits”), which has been exploring the issues of school leadership and the dynamics of change for the past decade.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor