GUEST COLUMN by Dave Cort, Ozark School Support Team (OSST)
I recently witnessed an MSBA (Missouri School Board Association) “training session” for new school board members. The gist of this training was to teach new school board members to become just like the old school board members. It was very effective and I can imagine how this particular class and instructor are highly successful in that endeavor.
The class started with an explanation about how everyone there, new and old, were different people with different personal ideals and personal agendas (different world views are even allowed.) But we all have one thing in common; we all want what’s best for our kids and we all want to make our school better.
From there, it makes perfect sense to understand that, while you may disagree with some of your colleagues on the “minor” issues, once a corporate decision is made, you must support it. Because we all have “one thing in common.”
He immediately went on to say that school boards make policy (they don’t really, but that’s in another story) and then delegate to the appointed superintendent the responsibility and authority to transmit those policies down the chain of command and execute them through his leadership of the staff. From there, he flatly stated that it was a responsibility for each veteran school board member to “teach” the new school board members on the “ethics” and procedures of being members of this close-knit group which he has now established firmly as a single-minded body.
Delphi 101: You see how he did that? There is nowhere to go from there than to have a single definition of “what’s best for our kids” and “make our school better.” because we “all have that in common.” From there it’s a simple matter to lead new school board members to an understanding that they are of one mind and body; and that mind and body is part of THE predefined mission of “what’s best for our kids” and “making the school better.”
Do you see how, in a brief 90-minute training session, all schools in the State of Missouri end up with identical “policies” and identical drives for new buildings, universal curricula, consolidation, mismanagement of finances, top-heavy administrations, and the myriad of problems we see in every single school in the State? It’s because, in spite of the fact that every single community in Missouri does NOT have, even within its own border, a single definition of “what’s best for our kids” and “how to make our school better”, every single school district DOES!
You escape this trap only by asking yourself, immediately after he establishes that “we’re all here to do what’s best for the kids and the school district” the simple question “Best according to who?”
Every school board and every school board member have “one thing in common” and it’s his definition of “what’s best for our kids” and “what makes our school better.” Further, in reaching that goal, the school board is to turn all responsibility over to the administration. They are to have blind trust in that administration. And old school board members are to use all means (including intimidation, threats of removal, and isolation) to “teach” new school board members how to become old school board members. If you don’t “have that in common” with the rest of the corporation, you are acting unethically, and he produces several conveniently selected scenarios to prove it.
This very short training session led by a man well versed and well trained in making it so lays bare the root of the problem with education in Missouri. By the next school board meeting (that very evening) it was apparent how good he is at his job. Meet the new board — same as the old board.
Christian County Trumpet Q & A with OSST
CCT: What tools can the public use to defend against state indoctrination of school board members?
OSST: Tools the public can use? Pressure on the school board and administration. Emails to school board members, by the tens or hundreds, questioning the treatment of these teachers, questioning the air conditioning problem, specifically questioning how an administrator who resigns less than 6 months into his renegotiated contract gets any kind of severance for resigning, things like this. Create a real chaos within the administration. Tens or hundreds of sunshine requests for copies of that severance package, for lists of who is and isn’t blocked by the school’s email server, maintenance schedules for various buildings with maintenance issues, even files like personnel which they know won’t be forthcoming but will require individual answers.
While these things are a nuisance for the administration; they are springboards for board inquiry — and foundation for holding the board responsible for the administration’s negligence. Sufficient public pressure on a board member living under the cloud of allegation of felony acts. At some point, with only 10 months left in his term, he ought to be forced to say “This just ain’t worth it any more.” If he’d resign, the board would choose his replacement.
All in all, with the board we have now, we ought to be seeing a lot of 4-3 votes instead of 7-0 votes.
New blog to learn more
Of course, the real solution is structural. I have started a blog http://www.opswindow.com to lead the public to an understanding of the problem and then lead them to a solution. That solution, of course, is to shift the entire paradigm from a school district managed by administrators to a school district managed by the elected board.