“You, too,” he wrote, “will soon realize the genuine satisfaction which comes from devoting inordinate amounts of time to a school system that your friends and neighbors believe is inexcusably horrendous-a state for which they will soon come to hold you personally responsible.” More ominously he added: “The worst part is bearing the responsibility for what is done, while having little or no authority to determine what should be.”
I laughed, confident that he was joking. After all, if I didn’t have the authority, who did? America prides itself on local control of its schools, but after four years on the board I have concluded that this notion of local control is a fallacy–our authority is stymied and I am no longer amused. Sure, I can decide where the bus stop will be, but does that raise our district’s SAT scores?
As a school-board member I am caught between the everincreasing number of state and federal mandates and everdiminishing funding. The state dictates graduation requirements and the minimum time to be spent on subjects at the elementary level. AIDS prevention has been added, but the state insists it be separate from other compulsory drug and health curricula. Special-education statutes require costly individualized educational plans for the mentally, physically and learning-disabled. Failure to comply with these regulations invites lawsuits, hearings and, ultimately, withdrawal of state funding.
While most mandates are not philosophically bad, things like special-education programs restrict school boards’ flexibility and limit resources available for educational improvement for other students. Computer education, gifted-student programs and elementary foreign-language classes are routinely eliminated to pay for what the legislatures say we must do.
This would be tolerable if Congress or any elected body determined that the benefits of its mandated programs were worth the expense. The problem is that no such evaluation is made. Why spend the time worrying about costs when you’re not paying the bill? In a democracy, the role of the legislature is to strike a balance between competing needs and desires. With finite resources, that becomes the challenge of governance. Congress and the state legislatures have abrogated their responsibility by refusing to make hard choices. They won’t, and local officials can’t.
We have two severely disabled students in our district who must attend boarding schools year-round. Under federal law our system must pay not only for combined tuitions of $199,000 but also mileage and tolls to their parents for transporting them home on weekends. The federal government reimburses us $305 for each of these students. Our state is more generous: under catastrophic provision it picks up anything more than $35,000 per student-this is five times our cost in educating a mainstream student. When our $12 million budget was reduced by taxpayers, these tuitions, sacrosanct by mandate, still had to be paid. The special-ed budget remained at $2 million. For those not protected by mandate, including the “best and the brightest,” who presumably will be our future problem-solvers, the resources were disproportionately reduced. When cutbacks occur, everyone should share the pain.
Less than 25 percent of the households in our town have children in school. We’re relying on the good will of 75 percent of the population to fund education. In a recession, it’s easy to rationalize that squeezing 40 kids into a class will not hurt as much as paying an extra $250 a year in taxes. Education budgets are voted down and local officials are told to spend dollars more wisely. This would be easier if budgets were not burdened with expenses that are more appropriate for social welfare.
In the critical matter of teacher performance, school boards are restricted statutorily by the state and contractually by the teachers’ union. In addition to the constitutional and antidiscrimination laws that protect all government employees, tenure protects teachers even further. The tenure statute does allow for the removal of incompetent teachers, but that’s time-consuming and expensive. For the mediocre, there is no law against scraping by.
Antiquated state certification laws hamper boards further by assuming a teacher is qualified, even if he or she hasn’t taught a particular subject or level for 25 years. When a reduction in force occurs, we retain the most senior “qualified,” who are not necessarily the best.
Although not as significant, another problem that the board faces is the decreasing ability of schools to discipline and to regulate dress codes. Unlike private schools, which can expel those who don’t conform, the public system must take everyone-including those barely able to count the days until they get out. Expulsion from a private school rids them of the problem and transfers it to us; expulsion from a public school means taxpayers spring for home tutoring costs.
It’s not the inordinate hours nor the lack of public appreciation, but the inability to effect change that creates the overwhelming frustration often felt by board members. Several years ago our town shortened the term of office for board-of-education members from six to four years, because too few were willing to serve that length of time. It won’t be long before two-year terms seem like an eternity.
