On Monday evening, a certain former school board member chastised us for delegating deliberations over facilities expansion and land acquisitions to our Finance and Facilities Committee. Citing the "classic battles" between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the "Kentucky Purchase" and the Alien and Sedition Acts, this individual argued that these matters should be taken up by the entire board in a public forum.
I won't repeat my arguments for curtailing facilities and land discussions until the economy straightens out. But the accusation that we are removing important matters from the public scrutiny is entirely inaccurate. In fact, this board has done more to make public our conversations on finance and facilities than any prior board that I can recall. We deliberately chose to hold these committee meetings entirely in public, with written minutes and audio records available to anyone, so any question of transparency sounds suspiciously like posturing. If a previous board was so concerned with airing these discussions, they could very well have done so.
If I'm not mistaken, John Adams was back on his farm in Massachusetts when Andrew Jackson purchased part of Kentucky in 1818. I do know, however, that the Alien and Sedition Acts came to represent Adams' preference for centralized federal authority against Jefferson's promotion of individuals' and states' rights. While as a libertarian I generally prefer Jefferson's position, I also realize that this whole topic has absolutely nothing to do with our responsibility as school board members.
As representatives of the public, school boards are responsible for governance over the public school organizations. These organizations are not granted any constitutional rights; they merely work for the people as directed by their school boards. In this sense, public schools are not different than any private sector service provider, despite an unusually heavy burden of regulations and mandates. Schools must operate and school boards must govern in much the same way as any corporation and board of directors. The school boards may delegate, but must never transfer, and should be ultimately responsible for, performing their fiduciary public duty.
If this seems obvious, then why is weak governance so critical a problem in U.S. public school systems? Unlike boards of directors in the private sector, school board members are usually unpaid and are often not elected for their management acumen. Lacking resources and expertise, board members must rely to an extraordinary extent on the judgment of their superintendent and administration with few opportunities for external management reviews. Administrations have become adept at managing their boards within an established public education industry operating model, and school boards have become rubber stamps for the organizations they govern.
None of this matters until the established system fails, and unfortunately that's what is slowly happening in many local school districts. The rapidly increasing property values that drove decades of revenue increases seem to be over, economically stressed communities resist new taxes, and in many cases state funds are also at risk. If nothing changes, expenses will eventually exceed revenues, creating deficits and draining reserves. However, the usual solutions are no longer viable options. Increasing taxes isn't going to happen in a bad economy, and personnel cuts will postpone deficits but won't solve the core problem.
This is where our school boards must engage in constructive intervention. Instead of allowing the system tom follow the old playbooks, we must raise expectations and guide districts to better processes. We must change the system before it fails.
