The Myth Of School Board Efficacy

Norm Thurston: “…With regards to public education, anyone who is unhappy with it should run for the school board.”

Have you looked at local school board agendas lately? They’re monopolized by non-academic subjects put before the school board by the board’s alleged subordinate, the Superintendent. School boards and their members are pre-occupied with budgets and funding shortfalls, pay scales, personnel, food, site safety and security, vendors and contracts, student behavior, closures, cut-backs, accreditation, non-academic classroom controversies, testing, trips, truancy, lawsuits, facilities and maintenance, activities, discipline, sports, projects, bus schedules, the Board itself and their personalities, grading systems (but not grades), and the occasional rubber-stamping of some new curriculum imposed by the state. You’ll never see a report from a board member having visited a classroom and assessing what they saw. You’ll seldom see academic achievement tracked year by year and what’s being done to improve student achievement or if particular teachers are falling short of academic goals and objectives. (Not that some of them don’t try.)

For example take a look at what the Ukiah Unified school board has discussed this year: https://simbli.eboardsolutions.com/SB_Meetings/SB_MeetingListing.aspx?S=36030479

The last time a local school principal tried to track teacher performance (the excellent Matt Murray, a former Harvard English prof, at Point Arena Elementary) his teachers complained about Murray’s tracking system which he had employed successfully in SoCal to Superintendent Mark Iacuaniello, a very stupid person, like his boss County Superintendent Paul Tichinin. Instead of backing his Principal as he had promised to do, Iacuaniello had Murray fired for holding teachers accountable. And Iacuaniello’s board blindly supported Iacuaniello.

And then there’s the California Educational Code, a grotesquely jargonized (“educratese” is more impenetrable than “bureaucratese” or “legalese”) conglomeration of rules and regs that make the California Penal Code look like Reader’s Digest. I have never heard of a Board member disputing the Superintendent or the District’s lawyer regarding compliance with the Ed Code in this County. In fact, I’ve never seen any evidence of a school board member even reading the Ed Code, unless its presented to them by the Superintendent for the Superintendent’s purposes.

Anyone who thinks that being a school board member is in any way connected to student academic performance or test scores has never been a school board member.

And don’t get me started on school budgets. They make the County’s byzantine accounting system look like a third-grade primer.

I won’t even go into the school system’s resistance to new concepts like community schools, such as the one County Superintendent Candidate Matt Glavatch proposed a few years back. School authorities ruled that Glavatch was ineligible to even run on an irrelevant residential technicality.

Sorry for the rant, but the idea that running for a school board position will do anything to improve student academic achievement is like running for political office in the hope of changing the electoral college.or the campaign finance system. Outsiders and serious critics need not apply.

PS. Here’s a generally positive article about school boards and their function: https://xqsuperschool.org/high-school-community/what-does-a-school-board-do-frequently-asked-questions/

But even they admit that school boards have very little to do with actual education:

“School boards address a wide array of issues, from the daily logistics of running a district to broader goals for the education of a community’s young people. On a practical, day-to-day level, school boards:

• Hire and evaluate the superintendent [in secret closed session meetings]
• Approve budgets [but not understand them]
• Set spending priorities [but not set funding levels]
• Approve textbooks and other curriculum materials [from the limited options offered]
• Adopt the annual school calendar [a big deal, apparently]
• Make decisions regarding opening and closing schools [very seldom]
• Work closely with school and district leaders on school schedules, supplies, safety, discipline, classroom resources, facilities, and other issues. [but not on academics and not independently]”

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LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo)

I feel compelled to respond to Mark Scaramella’s article to day “The Myth of School Board Efficacy.” Most of his criticisms and reflections are reasonably accurate, but I think that his underlying assumption of the role and responsibilities of an elected public school district board are off base. Our job as a board, and I have ten years of service on the Round Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees, is to establish the policies of the district and to hire the Superintendent. We aren’t really supposed to meddle in the various dynamics of classroom management, supervise or track performance of particular employees, or even develop specific quantifiable achievement goals. The role of public education in our society and culture is complex with many competing influences. Standardized test scores reflect the the educational background and income level of the parents and the general community considerably more than providing any indication if the students are benefiting from being in school every day. We need to provide safe, interesting, challenging, even fun sometimes, opportunities for these young people who don’t have many options other than to go to school for at least twelve years. It seemed to me years ago that the primary function of the public school system was to teach children how to “follow directions and tolerate boredom.” Thankfully we are doing a lot better than that, at least right now, these days, out here in Round Valley. This is a tough place, with a history which won’t quit repeating itself. People are still killing each other. Our schools are actually doing a pretty good job in helping to create some options to the past patterns. We have a lot of programs, in school and extra-curricular, which are inspiring and seem to be reasonably effective in creating some positive alternatives in the imaginations of the young people. Test scores are still the lowest in the state. That may never change.