Seeking a common ground?
Amy Condra
Aug 13, 2008

When I lived in Vietnam, there was one expression you would hear almost daily: “Same same, but different.”

Whether the speaker was referring to a market-day selection of durians or lotus blossoms, or, more commonly, the differences between Western ways and Asian traditions, the meaning was consistent.

“The goal—we want what we want— doesn’t change. But how do we plan to get there? Our routes will be vastly different!”

I was reminded of this when listening to a recording of last week’s Board of Supervisors’ meeting, as School Superintendent Dr. Linda Underwood and supervisor Jim Eads debated how this county can reach its goal.

What goal are they seeking to achieve?

To fund the expansion of Goochland County’s schools, so that all the county’s children receive the resources they need to be properly educated.

But the proposed paths toward that shared goal are starting to diverge to the point that the journey is taking a lot longer than it should.

The School Board wants a new school; the Board of Supervisors wants to renovate properties that are already in place.

The School Board believes that existing properties are inadequate to meet student needs; the Board of Supervisors asserts that these properties can be made to suffice.

The lack of communication between these two boards is in harsh evidence, no matter how many spoken words and letters are exchanged.

What it comes down to is, this situation is starting to seem no different than the bargaining that goes on at every Asian market.

One buyer wants, let’s say, a bowl big enough to hold enough rice to feed a family. The vendor wants to sell a bowl big enough that the profit will buy rice for his or her own family.

The back and forth offers and refusals reach a tipping point; who is going to relent?  Either they come to an agreement, or there’s no sale that day. And once that happens, neither one of them is going to be dining on rice that night.

And in this case— “same same, but different.” If these two boards don’t find a way to reach their goal, if they can’t come to an agreement and proceed from there, it is the county’s school children that are going to be going without.

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