SCHOOL
BOARDS
We enter the conference
room. The school district
superintendent and the school board president are casually seated at the end of
the table. The Superintendent is
laughing at something the board president is saying. As other board members come in and take their
seats at the table the superintendent greets each by name and makes some small
comment of familiarity. I look at the
Superintendent, a man with a Doctorate in Education and years experience in the
classroom and as a school principal, playing the part of a snake-oil
politician, obliviously grabbling in supplication to this group that will, in
the future, be asked to renew his contract.
I am sitting on the periphery
of the table with two other principals. We are there to report to the board a summary
of the month’s accomplishments at our schools. One of the school board members has a son
at my school that was not eligible for a basketball trip because of his grades
in language arts. I already know that I
will have to defend the teacher for maintaining her standards for
achievement.
The meeting starts and past
minutes are read, old business is discussed – usually to do with money issues,
or curriculum and testing issues which everyone on the board listens to
intently and pretends to understand. There
is a small discussion that perhaps the teachers have too much free access to
the copy machines and that they should be limited to a certain number of copies
per week. For new business it is
suggested that an electronic key card could be employed to determine who uses
the machine most, and controls the use.
The Superintendent immediately agrees.
Next the principals are asked
to report. I give a watered down
version of the testing preparations that the teachers and I have spent hours
discussing and planning, and a brief description of a cooperative learning
field trip that involves archeological research at a traditional Native fishing
site on the river. Everyone listens
attentively; then I ask if there are any questions.
Immediately my board member
states that a number of parents have complained to her about a particular
teacher who seems to have the goal of preventing students from engaging in extra-curricular
activities. I defend my teacher and her academic autonomy
to set standards in her classroom. The
rest of the board enthusiastically joins in, unanimously convinced that
students should be allowed to play basketball regardless of grades. I stand by the policy of eligibility and
come just short of telling the board member that her son is a pain in the ass
in class and thinks that because his mother is a board member he doesn’t have
to meet the requirements of the rest of the students. I look over at the Superintendent and he is
frowning. The board is heated and I am
aggravated but maintaining control; but refusing to capitulate. The
Superintendent steps in and says that perhaps the board should consider
reviewing the standards that exist among all district schools for sports and
other activity and set uniform standards.
A motion is made and passed
and the principals are asked to provide an in-depth report of eligibility
requirements at each of their schools for the next board meeting.
Elected school boards are the
other bane of education. Like
politicians, there is no competency test to qualify a person for the school
board. Members are mainly composed of
activist mothers or fathers who readily inform you that they are qualified for
the position because they are parents. (In
reality the only qualification for being a parent is the ability to fuck and
conceive.) Other members of the board
will be business persons looking for local recognition, and special interest
activist (usually religious) looking to insert their agenda into the school. Occasionally there is a retired school
teacher, but as a whole the board is woefully unqualified to set education
policies and totally ignorant of the day to day problems involved in educating
children in a classroom.
We don’t have civilian
elected boards intricately controlling doctor’s protocols and emergency room or
operating room procedure; nor do we have elected civilian boards manipulating
law firms, psychiatric medicine, physics or chemistry labs, and other
disciplines. Yet, we feel perfectly justified in ‘electing’
non educators to regulate and control the education processes of our school
districts.
Congress mandates the
curriculum through standards and testing requirements and school boards
interfere with the way schools are run on a day to day basis with frivolous and
uninformed edicts via their ability to hire and fire school
administrators.
We will never improve
American schools unless we remove the control from politicians and local school
boards and place education professionals in charge.
the Ol'Buzzard
Amen. Maybe it's not quite as bad in large districts, but school boards are the bane of rural schools. Almost everyone on the typical board got there because they had an agenda (religion, preferential treatment for their special needs kid, resenting teachers for having a nonfactory job, you name it) and were willing to campaign -- and often ran unopposed for election because if you don't have an agenda, you don't care enough to be on the board. Once in a huge while you'll get someone whose agenda is to actually improve the education the kids are getting but more typically it's something personal and petty.
ReplyDeleteOur local school board, btw, almost cost the district its accreditation by deciding to hire as superintendent a man whose highest degree was a BA in business and whose previous experience was owning and managing the local IGA. He had never taught school, let alone been an administrator. It was an interesting kerfuffle, to say the least.