Being responsible for the education of children is not easy. The speed, complexity, and complications of 21st century life is making this responsibility more and more difficult as every day we hear of a school controversy and crisis somewhere. A board meeting in Timbuktu easily becomes headlines on national nightly news given how a social media post can explode sensationally. And what is done in Timbuktu becomes a burning issue at a local meeting where most people cannot spell Timbuktu. Being responsible requires leaders to understand the essential issues of their place and time, to sort the here and now from the Timbuktu, and not be afraid to tackle the hard stuff – the right work – of educating children.
Why is this thus?
There are several givens whenever we gather to talk about our local schools. Our Constitution ensures our right to speak freely. Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Laws ensure that school board meetings are open to public attendance with an opportunity for the public to speak to the school board. And because almost everyone in the community attended a school of some sort, many people speak to their school board with the expertise of their personal school experience. In summary, we are free to express our opinions about school and the school board is obligated to listen. These are good things.
From the moment we labeled it public education, people felt compelled to express their opinion about how children should be educated. Any adult who has or can biologically create a child feels authorized to explain how children should be raised and educated. Today they express themselves standing at the lectern in front of the school board and from the screens of their computers, IPads, and smartphones while sitting at home. This guaranteed exchange of “you speak, and we listen” is now part of posted school board agendas. This is a healthy thing.
All board agenda items are not of the same importance. The annual and daily operations of a district school require boards to consider, discuss, and approve items of routine business investigated and proposed by administrators. These are the usual business of the board that once approved in the committee process need only a cursory airing in public and a vote. It is true to say that many boards of education live on a steady diet of usual business agenda and shy away from controversy. That said, the usual business is easy stuff and the controversial is the hard. The hard points a board to the right work it must do.
Lastly, there is nothing inherently wrong with controversy; controversy being a voicing of oppositional points of view. Good leadership understands that important educational issues will raise differing points of view and it is the work of the board to resolve conflicting points of view for the prosperity of the schools. Best leadership does not shy away from controversy but tackles it honestly.
What should we know about this thusness?
Controversies abound!
The pandemic gave most school boards a rude awakening to the hard stuff. As experienced ad nauseam, no school boards were educated or trained to deal with either pandemic education or the controversies of how schools should behave during a pandemic. Few boards, if any, escaped this public crisis and the argument of battling points of view. In fact, seated board members resigned, did not run for re-election, and were recalled by their electorate because of pandemic controversies. The board table was not for the faint of heart when spittle and spite flew from impassioned parents and residents who knew best about public health and public education in an emergency.
Concurrent to the pandemic, other controversies brewed and erupted in school board rooms. Events of police violence went national. BLK begat an introspection of systemic racism that begat renewed white nationalism that begat a legislative rewriting of US history that could not be taught in public schools. Speakers, despite historical fact, are making CRT their argument and the board room their arena.
Quietly then loudly gender identity and the evolving status of children claiming non-conforming gender expression forced the public, like tug-of-rope teams, to dig in their heels regarding who can use which bathrooms and locker rooms in schools. Parents care more about this issue than their children. The parent who cries “Protect my daughter!”, claims the media headline while distorting issues of discrimination and fairness.
There are quiet controversies afoot. As federal pandemic relief monies expire, school districts everywhere face financial crisis. Usual school funding is not adequate to sustain the technologies and school staffing wrought by the pandemic. While inflation diminishes family spending, school boards are proposing increases in local school taxes. The controversies of cuts to school programs and school closing will clog the school board agenda for years to come.
A second quiet controversy is teacher shortage. Teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities are dying for lack of enrollment. As baby boomer teachers retire school boards are hard put to find qualified replacement teachers. The controversy is this – state legislation is lowering the standards for a teaching license, persons who are not fully prepared to teach children to high standards of learning are being hired to assure a teacher in every classroom, student academic achievement is diving, and someone is to blame. Hello, school board member!
What is a board to do?
Do these three things to succeed.
- Grab each controversy by both ears, look it in the face, and deal with it. Ignoring a controversy builds anger in the partisans and they will damn you for your lack of action. Pussyfooting around a controversy allows it to grow constituent bases who demand action. If you cannot provide the action, constituents will find someone who can. Deal with it!
- Know that school governance is not a democracy; it is representative government and only board members vote on school decisions. As provided in law, the public has the right to speak with the school board and the board is obligated to listen. Do not take anything said personally, even from the most spittle mouthed. Do not take anything said as expert opinion or fact. At the end of the meeting everyone else goes home and only board members vote on how the district will respond to a controversy. Discuss and decide; that is what school boards do.
- The board speaks for the education of all children in the district not for the happiness of parents, residents, and dissidents. Self-interest, though denied, is the primary motive of every person who addresses the board – this is fact. A board member’s only self-interest is the best education for ALL children, with ALL in capital letters. A parent speaks for her child and her child’s peers. A teacher for her grade level or those in her class. A coach for her team. The business manager for the budget. Board members must consider ALL children, not just some, while ensuring that each child is provided an equal and equitable education and school experience. This is the rub. How to advance the cause of all while protecting the rights of the one.
Being responsible for the education of children is not easy. If it were, anyone could do it and we don’t want just anyone to be responsible for the education of ALL children. We want board members who can look inside the issues they confront to find humane, high ground, child-centered resolutions for tough questions. I would like to think that if one of the two women claiming the child in the Bible’s Solomon “the wise” story had not said to spare the child and thus created a true claim as mother, Solomon would not have cleaved the child in two but adopted it as his own. Board members consider ALL children your own and be willing take the forsaken child to your home. This is your school board standard.