I spent a little over 6 years on Trego’s school board – one of the comments I frequently heard was that we didn’t have a good school board. I heard it directly from the county superintendent. I heard an allusion from a county commissioner. I heard it in accusatory fashion from folks running the special ed cooperative. And all of them were correct.
And it is probably safe to generalize – we have 3 county commissioners and don’t have a particularly good commission. I don’t know how we can – though I do appreciate Stu Chrismore’s idea that the county commissioner’s residence may be mandated but that commissioner represents everyone in the county.
Back to the school board. There are five members on the school board. By law, they are responsible for all of the school’s management. Getting something done requires getting three of those members to vote for it. You don’t always get the same three. My personal belief is that a good board member, who can work with shifting votes, can make an effective board.
It took several years at Trego to pass a classified staff pay scale. When we finally passed it, I made the motion to adopt Eureka’s pay scale – and it passed, under old business. By the end of the meeting, there was a motion to hire a guy, it passed, and then a second motion to pay the new hire at a rate that was well above the just adopted pay scale. Didn’t ever get the guy hired because the motion to hire included ‘subject to passing his background check’. I suspect our new candidate knew that he wouldn’t.
It would be nice to have a perfect board – five members out of five voting to do the right thing. Kind of like the Supreme Court voting nine to nothing. Thing is, those non-controversial decisions do not show a good board – they show a problem that is so obvious that everyone agrees. A good board has at least one good member (not always the same person) who is able to convince two other members – not always the same two – to support a good decision.
And the school board has to make the right decision with a tremendous amount of influencers trying to get the decision to go their way. Every new teacher has ideas on what the board should do – and my experience is that most teachers are convinced that they should be in charge – not the board, despite the legality.
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