EDITORIAL - SCHOOL BOARDS HAVE FAILED US

By Doug Deane
Chair, East County Chamber of Commerce
Business Education Committee

School
Boards have become a dangerous institution.  It is sadly ironic that school
board members hire their district superintendent via an arduous interview process
with extensive background checks, but the only requirement to be one of those
doing the hiring is to live inside the district’s boundaries, and to
have filed an application with the registrar of Voters.

School board members don’t need to have graduated from college, from
high school, or even from any school in the district they are a candidate in,
as long as they are a resident and have met the filing requirements.  The
last I heard, the captain of a ship needs to spend years learning how to do
all of the things that it takes to keep a ship afloat.  Why aren’t
the highest ranking decision makers in a school district some of the most experienced
and qualified people in the district?

Part of the answer is that it’s always been this way.  The other
part of the answer is that we tolerate and even enable it.  Unfortunately,
school board members are generally unprepared, lack any skills that would be
predictors of positive performance in this important job, they are usually
elected by small voter turnouts, and they wind up handicapping the very students,
teachers and administrators who they are supposed to be serving.
  
It has been shown in many national studies that a contentious school board
almost always results in underperforming academic achievement by the students
in their district.

Worse, these supposedly non-political jobs have become highly politicized,
and have even become a target for those having specific political, economic,
social, religious and even personal agendas.  We don’t need school
board members with hidden agendas.  We need bright, knowledgeable, energetic
school board members who genuinely care about the quality of education that
our kids are getting.  I know that it’s a bit of a stretch, but
if you want to look for the cause of our nation’s current economic problems,
then my candidate for the first domino is our local school boards.

To be sure, many of our local boards are doing a good job for us.  But
others have been failing us for years.  One of the poster children in
San Diego County for problematic school boards is the Grossmont Union High
School District Governing Board.  Many years ago, one of our political
parties made school boards the target for social change, and the GUHSD was
one of the victims.  Although it has improved lately, that board has been
contentious and non-collaborative for decades, resulting in a district that
is rotting from the inside out.  Current new candidates threaten to throw
it back into the past.  There are many other school districts in our region
with the same problem.

I strongly urge the voters of San Diego to look past partisan politics when
voting for school board members.  Ignore endorsements by the Republican
or Democratic Parties, or by the teacher’s union.  The best candidates
may indeed be those with such an endorsement, and they may be incumbents, but
you have to make up your own mind about that.  Ask your children’s
teachers or principal for their opinion.  By all means, attend a debate
or a town meeting.  If you are considering voting for an incumbent, then
find out how that school board and board member have been performing lately.
Find out how your district’s test scores compare to other districts in
the County. And DO NOT vote for any candidates who have declined to provide
position statements, or whose qualifications indicate a lack of experience
with teaching or any of the issues related to those faced by board members.

I urge all of you to vote for the school board candidates who are most experienced
with schools and with their related issues, who will work collaboratively together
to improve the quality of our children’s education, and whose sole purpose
for running IS NOT the advancement of a “hidden” agenda.  Our
children and our nation deserve better than that.

Editor’s note:  Read East County Magazine’s article
on the GUHSD school board race:www.eastcountymagazine.org/?q=guhsd.
For info on Proposition U, the GUHSD school bond measure, see www.eastcountymagazine.org/?q=prop_u   

You can listen to a debate between all 5 candidates here:  www.copswiki.org/twiki/bin/view/Common/M661