Public schools serve the public and are governed by lay school boards as mandated in state constitutions. In every state, public education is one of the longest standing and most viably evolved state institutions. In an era when our political, social, economic and cultural institutions are so challenged as to be ineffective, I marvel at the resilient integrity of public education. Acknowledging this, it is interesting and informative to observe how national, state, and local leaders who are not at the local “school board pay grade” try to affect schooling in the time of COVID.
Notwithstanding the fact that some large, urban school district school boards reflect partisan elections and some have mayoral control, 95-plus percent of school boards in our nation are populated with civic-minded, education-committed members whose primary function is to provide policy guidance and financial authorization for the school district. As the most grass root of public services, board members know and are known within their school district communities. Their “pay grade” is nominal and their community appreciation and recognition is underspoken. In a word, school board work is the epitome of local government making decisions that directly represent and affect a local community.
In the time of COVID, the status of children in or out of school has risen to the highest voices in the nation and state. The fact that public education is our nation’s largest child care provider means that when children are in school parents are available for work and when children are not in school parents are conflicted between caring for children at home and being available for work. School closure due to COVID affects employment, wage earning, consumer spending, and economies on all levels. The crux of the problem, however, is that economy is political. Hence, political voices want to influence, if not command, that children return to school so that parents can return to work so that the economy can be improved so that politics can resume its inordinate place in our society.
The distance between national and state voices and children in local school classrooms is almost interstellar. Talk and commandments with the broadest of brushes by big time officeholders are incognizant of their effects upon local schools. In reverse, every local child has a name that is known in her school. She matters. Her education and welfare matter. The trajectory of an individual child’s school experience is the meat of school board committee work and board policy discussions. Prior to and in the time of COVID, local school board members are laser focused on how their decisions impact the education, health and safety of children with names.
In our state headlines, a US Senator declares that all children must be in school in September. Politics at play. Our President declares that all schools must open in the fall. Politics at play. Our state legislators are wary of mandating that all schools will open in September while opining that they should. Our local representatives portray plans that will open school in ways that align with their partisanship. Politics at play. Local business leaders send letters to their school board members urging that all children should be in school in September. Economical politics at play. Parents are stuck on the question – what is best for my child. That is the right decision to be made.
The right “pay grade” for deciding the status of schools in the time of COVID is the local school board. They are locally-knowledgeable and locally-responsible and their decisions affect children with names.
Local governance is as local governance does, to paraphrase Forest Gump.