Congratulations, Graduates!

On June 20, 2017, it was my great pleasure as Board President to deliver a brief address to Hillsborough Township High School graduates. This was a very special occasion for me personally as it was the only year of fifteen that I was president - and my daughter was one of the graduates.

I took the opportunity to speak, in my own way, about American exceptionalism - though I never used that phrase. In my view, the thing that makes America exceptional, i.e. different from all other nations, is that there is no single religion, ethnic background, or cultural tradition that bonds us. Instead, we are bound by an idea - that humans have inalienable rights centered on freedom and individual liberty - and that we are stronger as a nation because we choose to have this idea rise above cultural, ethnic, and racial divisions. E Pluribus Unum, indeed. And by the way, public education is what makes that work, when public education itself is working.

The following is a transcript of my remarks that day.

"Good afternoon graduates, parents, family, and friends. Congratulations! 

One of the few perks granted a school board president is the privilege of speaking at graduation. Now, as we all know, no student remembers anything that was said at their graduation - and today that goes double for one graduate out there who hasn't listened to a word I’ve said since she was about fourteen! Nevertheless, I am going to give it a shot. 

I stand before you today not only as a representative of your nine elected school board members, but also, and more importantly, as a representative of the people of Hillsborough, who have provided this education to you as more than their obligation, but as their gift. And what an important gift. 

We have heard much in recent years about how America, a nation of immigrants, finds its strength through its diversity. But that’s only half the story. America is great because of our ability, indeed necessity, of setting aside our diversity and uniting as Americans. This is as true for those who trace their family tree back to the beginning of our country as it is for those recent immigrants we welcome each year. And a public school education is the catalyst. 

When Alexis de Tocqueville traveled through America in the 1830s, studying and compiling his great works on American democracy, he marveled at a classless, egalitarian society. One whose cultural traditions arose from their great founding documents - centered on freedom and individual liberty. This was before the great waves of immigrants from Ireland, Scandinavia, Eastern and Southern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and all corners of the globe - each bringing their own cultural traditions. 

What they found is that America is more than a place to travel to on a map, it is a place to travel to in your head. It doesn't matter where we begin our journey if we all end up in the same place, as Americans. 

In 2012 author Richard Kahlenberg wrote, “Public schools were founded in this country to make sure that future generations of citizens have an appreciation for democratic values, understand what we have in common as Americans, and have the skills to be productive members of society.” 

Through education, we give you the gift of America, and in return, we ask only that you pass this great gift on to your children and grandchildren."

Fight Censorship

It wasn't that long ago that school administrators and even teachers decried the infiltration of political ideologies into the classroom. I think I was in my second term as an elected school board member in 2011 or 2012 when the superintendent told me that he wouldn't stand for indoctrination in the classroom, and would want to be informed immediately if any teacher was dispensing political views in place of learning. 

My, how things have changed in a decade. Nowadays, in states like New Jersey, indoctrination in one point of view is not only tolerated, it's mandated. It's not just that students never hear any opposing views on subjects such as climate science, the founding of the United States, or any of a wide range of social issues - they don't even know that other points of view exist!

We hear a lot today from the progressive left about "book banning". Efforts to ensure reading materials are age-appropriate are derided as censorship. What people don't know is that real censorship in "the marketplace of ideas" has been going on for decades.

In my fifteen-plus years as a school board member, I can't think of even one book on a summer reading list or sent to the school board to be approved for use in the classroom that was written by a conservative author. Not one. But there were plenty offered up for student use written by progressives and/or outright communists (Howard Zinn comes to mind). Sometimes I voted No on these texts - but with no alternatives ever presented by administrators, it turns into a futile battle.

This is the real de facto "book banning" - and parents have no idea.

Yet there are hundreds of great reads by renowned, accomplished conservative authors. I will list a few here. See if you can figure out what they all have in common (besides never being allowed in a school library).

• Discrimination and Disparities - Thomas Sowell
• White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era - Shelby Steele
• My Grandfather's Son - Clarence Thomas
• Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America  - John McWhorter
• Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed - Jason L. Riley
• Liberty vs. the Tyranny of Socialism - Walter E. Williams
• What's Race Got to Do With It? - Larry Elder
• Blackout - Candace Owens
• Black Rednecks and White Liberals - Thomas Sowell
• The Content of Our Character - Shelby Steele

Rise and Shine

For some years now, members of the public have asked the Hillsborough Township School Board to consider changing the start time at the high school from 7:30 to 8:30 or even later. They cite studies purported to show that students get more sleep, perform better in school, and have better overall health when beginning school later in the morning. 

I confess that while I was on the board I was skeptical of the benefits of later start times - and having researched the issue I remain skeptical. But that doesn't mean I didn't work on the problem. The problem being - what would the district do if the state were to mandate 8:30 start times? A little over a year ago, at the April 20, 2022 Operations Committee meeting, I discussed at some length my ideas. At that point - even though board members had been nodding their heads as residents came to the podium on this issue - the board was waiting for the administration to lead with some proposals. None were forthcoming. The next day I sent an email to the members of the committee, the acting superintendent, and the business administrator summarizing my proposal. Below are the contents of the email for your consideration.

Adjustment of High School Start Times

In consideration of the fact that the NJ legislature may in the near future mandate a later high school start time, potentially as late as 8:30, I have put together some thoughts on how this might be accomplished while also addressing other issues.

• The length of the school day. Currently, the high school day is approximately 30 minutes longer than the other schools in the district. Besides the inherent inequity for our staff, this also leads to transportation issues.
• The lunch period is too short. For students wishing to purchase lunch, there is often not enough time to get in line, make a purchase, find a seat, and eat.
• In our current system lab sciences are tied to PE periods so that students can miss PE once per cycle to have a double period of science. This causes scheduling conflicts.
• Short class periods, very short periods split by lunch, and frequent, short passing periods.

It should be self-evident that a change of the school dismissal from 2:30 to 3:30 would have a severely detrimental effect on participation in athletics and other after-school activities, including employment. If the school day is shortened by 30 minutes, school can begin at a state-mandated 8:30 and dismiss at a reasonable 3:00. This would seem to be a good compromise. Also, when every school in the district has the same length of day, transportation routes should be able to be more efficiently tiered.

I propose dividing the 6.5-hour schedule into A Days and B Days. Essentially classes would meet every other day. In this plan, instruction periods would be approximately 80 minutes long; passing would be 4 or 5 minutes, and lunch periods approximately 37 minutes.

The daily bell schedule might look something like this:

8:30-8:40 Homeroom

8:45-10:05 Period 1

10:10-11:30 Period 2

11:34-12:12 Period 3 Lunch

12:16-12:53 Period 4 Lunch

12:57-1:35 Period 5 Lunch

1:40-3:00 Period 6

Classes would be in periods 1, 2, 3-4, 4-5, 3-5, and 6. Classes during 3-5 would be split by lunch. The 80-minute period for most of the day means that any day can be a lab day. This will divorce lab periods from PE. It also opens up the possibility of making PE a semester (half-year) course that can be taken during a different period in the spring than in the fall, thereby better accommodating the scheduling of other semester courses.

During this technological age, an A/B schedule is eminently doable, if not preferable. In years and decades past, it was imperative to receive instruction from a teacher each day, as the face to face instruction time was the primary means of communication. Now, students have access to online resources from the teacher and others and do not need to see the instructor each day.

There will be some challenges. Can you do lunch in three periods? Kathy Major has talked about a plan to utilize outdoor space for lunch so perhaps that could be an option. Or maybe period 2 would need to be split creating one more lunch period (10:53-11:30) and one more split instruction period.

Would students take 8 courses or 7? Even with 90 fewer work hours per year, teachers might have an objection to teaching 6 classes compared to 5. So perhaps students would take 3 classes on A Day and 4 on B Day or vice versa, (with teachers having three classes one day and two on the other). Students could be assigned to the cafeteria for study hall during periods 1, 2, or 6 on the day they have 3 classes. In any case, some modeling would need to be done to cover various scenarios.

 

I hope this serves to illuminate the suggestions I made at the recent Operations/Finance meeting during the discussion of later school start times.

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.

Pass The Budget, Not the Buck

There are more things that you can't do as a school board member in New Jersey than there are things you can do. Aside from selecting a superintendent, you can't hire anyone and you can't fire anyone. You can't interact with school personnel, and you can't see a sample lesson plan before you approve the school curriculum. Etc., etc. But what you can do is pass a budget. 

With each passing year, as more school policies are dictated by the state, school board members have less impact on the direction of their districts. Board members are told that they can't even have input into whether or not the district will "track" students into advanced, general, or remedial classes or use differentiated instruction within the classroom (more on this in another post).

But board members still hold the purse strings - if they have resolve.

Here are the keys:

• Be vocal in public about what you want and don't want in the budget
• Signal that you will vote No if there are items that are objectionable
• Hold the superintendent accountable for adhering to the budget you pass

As I explained many times at board meetings over the years, aside from some broad categories where monies must remain segregated (capital expenses, maintenance, and cafeteria funds to name a few), much of the budget, once approved, is left to the superintendent to manage.

This is why I always tried to refer to the budget as a "budget plan". It is the opportunity for the board members to stand up and fix their priorities - if not in stone, then at least in an Excel spreadsheet. And then hold the administration accountable. 

We know that there are times when funds will have to be moved from one account to another during the year to cover unplanned expenses - but the administration should always be seeking consent, if not formal approval, for these changes.

My experience on the board taught me that once the budget was passed it was promptly forgotten. Unless...unless board members were vocal in public at budget time about what they wanted. It's not easy. Superintendents generally do not have any regard for the priorities of the board. Several years ago when board members wanted to add three additional guidance counselors at the elementary school level we said so at a public meeting. It wasn't easy. 

About ten years ago when the Operations Committee of the board still had the primary responsibility of hammering out the budget with the superintendent, the committee asked for changes to the superintendent's recommended budget. The superintendent wasn't happy about this and ultimately prepared two budgets - one labeled as the district budget, the other as the Operations Committee budget! 

How far we have fallen! Fifteen years ago the Finance Committee of the board held up the budget for weeks because we objected to a $6000 expenditure that we found unnecessary. Nowadays, with an item that small, the administration would probably just buy it anyway no matter what the board's wishes because it was needed. For whatever. Board members, don't let that happen.

Who Do You Represent?

In the United States, it's pretty much universally accepted that elected representatives of the people are in their positions to represent the people that elected them.

Except if you are a school board member in New Jersey.

Most school administrators that I came in contact with during my fifteen-plus years as a school board member would tell you that a board member's constituents are the students of the district. The official position of the New Jersey School Boards Association (a group that SHOULD be advocating for school board members, but doesn't) is that board members are not representatives of the people in their communities, but rather are "agents of the state".

Did you really think that the State of New Jersey would invest any actual power in 5,000 normal citizens?

It seems that the school board elections are only to give the sad saps of New Jersey the ILLUSION that someone will be representing their interests. Try as they might, good school board members are prevented from doing this at every turn. From Curriculum to Covid, it's always the same - the state and the school administrators will push things along and school board members are only there for cover. And the NJSBA is there to keep the train rolling. No other reason.

I questioned this every year I was on the board. There are no rational answers. If school board members are not permitted to represent the public then why have elections at all? The county superintendents could certainly look at the resumes of candidates from each district and appoint whomever they wish. There is no answer to this.

Why are school board members constantly, CONSTANTLY, informed by the NJSBA that they have no individual power, but only as a group? Why do board members need to be told that? That situation is no different than any other elected body - from a township committee to the NJ Assembly to the US Congress - yet no other group needs to be reminded that their power is only as a group. There is no answer forthcoming.

This frustration is not at all limited to right-leaning board members. Believe me when I tell you that there is an equal number of newly-elected board members from the left side of the aisle who are just as frustrated.

In a future post, I will try to give some Hillsborough-specific examples.

Domestic Terrorists

Last week the House Judiciary Committee released its interim report concerning the involvement of the Department of Justice with the National School Boards Association and the labeling of concerned parents who attend school board meetings as "domestic terrorists".

As a school board member for close to sixteen years between 2007 and 2023 I have to say I never felt threatened by any parent expressing their concerns at a school board meeting - and certainly not by any "far-right", "ultra-MAGA" Republican. Of course, there were times, especially during my stint as board president in 2017, when I felt uncomfortable. It's never easy to tell people things they don't want to hear. When things go wrong at the schools you need to expect difficult questions. That year I faced many difficult questions from the public podium - union issues, mold due to faulty HVAC equipment, lead in the water in several schools, heating issues, air-conditioning issues, substance use concerns, personnel issues, etc. I always answered honestly and firmly and tried to project that I was on the same side as the public.

Indeed, the only time I ever felt threatened as a school board member was not by the general public, but by the local teachers' union. During contract negotiations, it was typical for hundreds of union members to come to a school board meeting and stand outside the meeting room, in the school hallway, lining both sides of the hallway so that board members had to literally squeeze through a narrow gauntlet between rows of scowling union members. That was physically intimidating. During and before my time on the board, other members had union protesters picket outside their homes. 

But beyond all of that, there is something bigger going on here. It was revealed very early on in the DOJ's targeting of parents that the White House collaborated with the National School Boards Association in drafting a letter from the NSBA to the DOJ asking to define protesting parents as domestic terrorists and use all the powers against them that the DOJ is permitted to use against domestic terrorists. 

There was never any threat to school board members from parents. The letter and the DOJ response were political - connected with the upcoming November 2021 governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey where parental rights in education had become an issue - and meant to intimidate PARENTS!

In the aftermath, the NSBA lost nearly half of its membership with 22 states withdrawing from the organization and many others publicly rebuking the letter. The New Jersey School Boards Association remains. And that is a topic for another post.