Spineless, Maybe...

I've written before about the defined role of a New Jersey school board member. And truthfully it should be easy to understand. Board members are policymakers, not administrators. In broad terms, board members must refrain from involving themselves in the school district's day-to-day operations. That's great in theory and should keep administrators in their lane, except for one thing - administrators and the education establishment think that board members are idiots.

 

That's not quite right. I would change Mark Twain's famous quote above to read, "In the first place God made worms. This was for practice. Then he made school boards" because while school board members certainly aren't idiots, they rival most invertebrates for lack of spine.

Over the years, administrators have slowly scraped away most of what school board members can do and taken it for themselves - sometimes aided by state regulations - all the while giving school board members essentially meaningless tasks such as approving sixth-period coverage. 

There are a host of things that have nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the district that school board members are prohibited from weighing in on. School board members have no input on the hiring of a new high school principal or a head football coach, for example, even though those actions would more easily fit under the umbrella of "policy" than they would "administration".

One of the big topics of discussion on the school board the year before I was first elected was how class rank should be calculated. That was 17 years ago. I can't imagine the current school board in Hillsborough having any input into something like that today.

After the disastrous Covid-era high school graduation in 2020, I proposed changing our graduation policy to allow the elected board members to have input into the date, location, and manner of graduation. I think we can all agree that high school graduation has nothing to do with "administering the schools". Indeed, it is the board that awards the diplomas! Yet I got so much pushback from administration and a contingent of board members that all I was able to negotiate was a one-sentence change that required the superintendent to inform the board of graduation details a few months in advance. 

Administrators continue to come up with novel ways to get what they want without board input or approval. In 2021 a decision was made by the administration to "de-track" students at the intermediate school level. This meant that students would no longer be grouped by aptitude in their subject classes. Now, you can argue for or against such a change, but you must agree that a move like that is broadly a change in policy, not "day-to-day". In other words, shouldn't the public, through their elected representatives, have a say in whether or not the district will be "tracking" students?

Well, in this case, the answer was No. The move to de-tracking was framed as a Student Growth Objective of the school principal, which by necessity made it a personnel matter walled off from board members. Outrageous! 

And the coup de grace? When I brought this issue to the New Jersey School Boards Association representative at Hillsborough's annual board retreat she agreed wholly with the superintendent! And the board slinked away in the mud.