A unique American institution - the local school board - may be on the way out. In many countries, the national government runs the schools. In others, it is the states or provinces. No other country has the equivalent of our 15,500 school governments, each with substantial power to hire staff, select textbooks, make curriculum choices, determine salaries and conditions of employees. These powers are not absolute. School boards are required to operate within state law, but there remains substantial room for each school board to do things differently from its neighbors.
It's difficult to explain our system to foreigners. They can't understand how children in one school are required to take sex education while those next door can't and that $4000 a year is spent on each child in one school while $7000 is in the other. Local school governance means that each school district can tailor what it does to what its local people want. It also is the basis of substantial inequities.
In recent years, there's been plenty of concern about schools. Much discussion has centered on the quality of teachers, management and leadership, homework, course requirements, promotion and graduation standards, and the length of the school year and day. Very little attention has been paid to the body that makes most of these decisions, our basic system of public school governance - the local school board.
That might lead us to think that people are pretty happy with school boards. This just isn't the case. But instead of a national debate on whether the school board system is working or not, how it might be improved or what other system might replace it, dissatisfaction is being expressed in some very different ways.
♦ The states of Iowa and Minnesota have enacted tuition tax credits and deductions to help parents who want to get their kids out of the schools run by school boards and into private schools. The initial amount of financial help is small, but there are pressures to make the assistance big enough to include more families.
♦ Minnesota has enacted other laws that permit parents to get their kids out from under the jurisdiction of their local schools. Colleges and universities can offer courses to high school students so that they can leave the school run by the local board and have their education at a college instead. Also, Minnesota is implementing a program that would allow parents to enroll their children in the public schools of other districts.
♦ Illinois is considering legislation to reform the schools of Chicago. The final form of the bill is still to be determined, but strong consideration is being given to removing the current Chicago school board, appointing a new one and creating a number of other bodies that would take away some of the traditional powers of the central board. One proposal would create mini school boards for each school with substantial parent (and some teacher) representation.
♦ New Jersey's Governor Kean successfully pushed through a law that allows the state to declare a school district "educationally bankrupt" and to allow the state, rather than the locally elected school board, to operate the school district. Jersey City is the first district the state has moved against. More will likely follow.
♦ In New York City, the Municipal Assistance Corporation has agreed to give $600 million for desperately-needed school construction but refuses to give the money to the school board. Instead, MAC says, the state must create a separate agency to build schools or the funds will not be granted. Also, in New York City, there are daily media stories alleging that community school board members in several of the 32 decentralized districts are involved in drug dealing, in demanding money and sexual favors for jobs and promotion and in the disappearance of large sums of money.
♦ In Chelsea, Mass., the poorest school district in the state, the school committee is about to enter into an unprecedented agreement to turn its schools over to Boston University, a private institution, for ten years. During that time, BU would run the schools and be exempt from some major state laws that all school boards must obey to protect citizens. The elected school board would have almost no powers. It could ask BU to "reconsider" its decisions, but BU ultimately decides. The school board, if it could muster 5 votes out of 7, could tell BU to leave, but if BU leaves it will take with it the private monies it says it will raise to increase teacher salaries, provide early childhood programs, parent education and many other goodies. While the district will have the legal right to oust BU, the likelihood of its doing so - given the political consequences of freeing itself from large-scale financial dependence - is about as great as getting an addict off crack.
Clearly there are problems with many school boards. Democracy does not guarantee that the right people are always elected or selected. Nor does it guarantee that there will be no politics or patronage. (State agencies and colleges are not free of these problems either.) But democracy often provides the people with an effective way to make change.
If there are problems with school boards as they now exist, there ought to be a national debate about the issue. How wide-spread are these problems? Do we need changes in a few places or throughout the country? Are there problems with just a few individuals or with the institution itself? Are there ways to strengthen boards? Should more authority be moved to the state? Should there be a greater voice for professionals? For parents? Should we permit or encourage the contracting out of school districts to private institutions? School boards now are subject to various laws designed to promote good government, openness and avoidance of conflict of interest. Which of these laws should be applied to BU and other private contractors? (BU says none.)
We may need to make big changes, but if they are made, we need to make them after discussion and debate, with our eyes wide open to the consequences. The last thing we can afford is to back into them because we're so disgusted that we're willing to go with the first alternative offered. If we're going to change a democratic institution that has served us for 150 years, shouldn't we do it thoughtfully and democratically?