Tag Archives: school governance

Are We Prepared To Do What Needs To Be Done?  Sometimes But Not Always!

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“What are you prepared to do?”, gasped the dying Sean Connery character in The Untouchables.  His cut-to-the-bone question begs answers as educators struggle today with meaty problems.  We know the problems facing educators; they are abundantly clear.  We even know viable resolutions.  The real issue is this – are we prepared to do what is required to achieve what we want?

Take your pick of these:  How should schools fill the gaps in student achievement, some attributable to the pandemic?  How should schools treat diverse gender identification?  How should schools respond to the politics of book banning and curricular pruning?  What is public education’s response to state funding of church-based schools?  How should a school respond to racism, prejudice, and discrimination in its community?  What are parent rights in the education of children beyond choosing a school for their enrollment?  How do we re-instill trust in local public schools?

What do we know?

These and other problems exist, and they afflict our ability to successfully prepare all children for adult life.  Most are tangential to teaching and learning yet their presence gets in the way of our daily work with children.  Each begins with school governance and filters it down to affect classroom application. 

These are not the easy problems of physical infrastructure, such as not enough classrooms or outdated HVAC systems.  Once difficult to resolve, we would take on several of these old facility problems in place of one that is new.  The new problems are social-cutural-political-economic swamps buttressed by special interest activism.  No politely discussed hammer and nail solutions will resolve today’s issues of in-your-face demands of “I want what I want regardless of what you say” confrontations.

Our history reflects three responses when public education perceives a significant problem.  These responses are listed in the order of their usual employment, most often to seldom ever.

  • Complain about the problem, draw attention to it, then acquiesce to the status quo, accommodate the status quo, and do nothing.
  • Ignore the problem.  Continue doing what schools usually do hoping the problem will either go away or some other authority will resolve it.
  • Find a high ground position to resolve the problem, create a consensus stakeholder solution, and move from the current status quo to a new, hopefully improved status.

In recent months, I added a fourth response. 

  • In the face of personal attacks on school leaders shaping policy and program as demanded by public demonstrators knowing they do not represent most of the community nor what is best for educating children.  Avoid trauma at cost!

I believe that our traditional school board governance with professional educational leadership knows what they should do to resolve contemporary, hot issues.  George Orwell told us “All issues are political issues”.  Once again, he got it right.  Knowing what should be done in the face of “all things are political” is a new and troublesome quandary for our apolitical school leadership.  “What are you prepared to do?”, is the question of our day.

A case in point – achievement gaps in reading.

If prepared to do what is necessary, we can.  Gaps in student achievement in reading and math preceded the pandemic and were worsened by the pandemic.  The answer – stop doing what is not working and start doing what will work.  Our state history of dealing with reading achievement gaps was to acquiesce to traditional reading association lobbyists keen on retaining whole language, blended language, and “three cueing” techniques.  Historically, we chose to complain and then do nothing when the same old reading instruction did not move the reading gap needle.  Instead, our legislature passed a bipartisan reading bill, Act 20, that makes the science of reading principles the official reading curriculum for all children.  The Act directs the DPI’s new Office of Literacy to improve new teacher preparation, veteran teacher professional development, and install regional coaching systems to ensure all children all children are being taught using the science of reading principles.

Kudos to Rep. Joel Kitchens and others for authoring the bill and persisting against traditional opposition to passage of Act 20.

Gaps in math achievement.

A similar fix is available for filling traditional and post-pandemic gaps in math achievement.  Stop hiring teachers who were good at math as students.  Hire teachers who are proficient in pedagogies for teaching math and mathematical reasoning.  Too many veteran math teachers were intuitive math students in school.  They can demonstrate and explain how they solve math problems, but they cannot explain the mathematical reasoning in ways that non-intuitive children understand and need to apply. 

Principals have observed the difference in these two types of teachers for decades and cherish their pedagogically proficient teachers. 

Our problem is that while high school math teacher licensing requires a baccalaureate major in mathematics, 4K-8 teachers are generalists requiring minimal post-high school study in mathematics.  As instruction in algebra and geometry concepts creeps further into elementary school, few teachers are prepared to explain the math reasoning behind the concepts.  Students are then underprepared in understanding why solutions for algebra and geometry problems work when they sit in secondary school math classrooms.  As math becomes more complex, their programmed responses to simpler math result in failed test questions.

Are we prepared to insist that every teacher of mathematics must be prepared to teach mathematics not just do mathematics?  Complaining or ignoring the problem is not an answer.  Creating a high ground consensus of IHEs, local school leaders, and parents can cause a viable resolution to a problem that currently is stuck in the same old, same old.  We know what to do and how to do it, if we are prepared to fix the problem of gaps in student math achievement.

Other problems and school sorrows.

The solution story for Act 20 resembled a physical infrastructure problem.  We identified a problem, studied solutions, presented, and debated a proposal, ironed out points of disagreement, and concluded with a positive, consensus resolution.  Other contemporary problems are not so easy.

School is a complex social, cultural, political, economic, and sometimes educational, organism.  It is authorized by our state government and run by a local government, our school board.  Once the most even keeled of governance venues, grass roots school board meetings have become battlefields.  This is especially accurate for social, cultural, political, economic-blended issues.  Consider these:

  • Requests to ban books and materials in school libraries and classrooms.
  • Non-traditional gender identification.
  • Access to school restrooms and locker rooms by students requesting non-traditional gender identification.
  • Non-traditional gender identifying and gender-changing student participation in gender-based athletics and activities.
  • Use of flags and other identifying symbols other than the US flag, state flag, and other official symbols.
  • Assertions of a parental right to override school board policy or school regulations based upon personal demand.

During the pandemic and afterward we observed school boards mired with social, cultural, political, economic issues brought by parents in conflict with CDC guidelines, local health departments rules, and school policies.  No one had a game plan or standing policies and in their absence every ruling a school applied was subject to protest.  Heated arguments were common, and few settled for “we agree to disagree” settlements.  The pandemic grew activism based upon personal points of view.

In the post-pandemic, arguments about vaccines and mitigation shifted to gender identification and gender-based books and school materials, gender transforming student participation in school sports, and the use of non-national and state flags and symbols in school.

Individual school districts used one or more of the four problem responses listed above, some with more success than others.  With the start of the 2023-24 school year, conflict on these issues will not dissipate and it will grow.

What are you prepared to do?

“We are a country based on the rule of law” is a statement being used at the national level to discuss resolution of significant challenges to our representative form of democracy.  The “rule of law” statement also holds for local school district challenges.

We elect members of our community to represent local interests in the governance of our schools.  Much of that governance is the application of federal and state regulations and statutes.  It is challenges that are not addressed by legislation and court ruling that create the targets for heated arguments.

The rule of law requires those authorized to establish and execute laws to do so.  It also requires those under the jurisdiction of these authorities to comply with their laws and execution of laws.  Secondly, the rule of law creates pathways for those in disagreement with the authorities to either bring forward their complaints and/or exercise their lawful opportunities to remove members of the authority through recall or replacement at the next election.  Beyond these, the rule of law does not abide authorities who ignore or fail to fulfill their duties or citizenry who choose to defy the established rules or act in ways that prevent the authorities from doing their duties.

“Being prepared to do” means school boards and school leaders cannot complain without action or ignore problems in the hope they will go away or cave in the face of personal attack on the singular demands of activists.  Instead, “being prepared to do” means taking all possible action to create higher ground, consensus resolutions and in the absence of full consensus make decisions in keeping with “best practices”. 

We have good examples of how “being prepared to do” leads to success in our schools.  In memory of a mentor from decades ago, “it is time to pull up our socks and do what needs to be done” and “more than Trix, school is for kids”.  There are few problems we cannot resolve when we maintain the integrity of our institutions and act upon best and informed practices.  There always may be disagreement, but then that is inherent in a representative democracy.

Highjacking School Board Governance

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When I became a classroom teacher in 1970 my principal and I came to three essential understandings.  The school district would provide me with an approved curriculum of subject content and academic skills for my grade levels of students.  I would provide the teaching and learning strategies to cause the children in my classes to learn their grade level curricula.  The principal would evaluate my teaching performance through an objective and subjective assessment of student engagement and achievement in learning the assigned curriculum.  For five decades these three understandings guided my work as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board member.  I believe these three understandings are critical for the educational success of teaching and learning:  the school board decides the curricula, the teacher decides the teaching, the administration supervises teaching and learning.

School Boards Decide Curricula

I cherish the pedagogic freedom of a teacher to use the best teaching strategies to cause students to learn.  This is not a license to teach whatever and however.   According to Wisconsin Statute 118.01(1), school boards will decide the curriculum, course requirements, and instruction consistent with the statutory goals and expectations for educating children in the school district.  Teachers in public education do not have total academic freedom.  That’s okay.  Using the language of our state statutes, my school district in consultation with district faculty, content area specialists, and administrators, selected the best curricula for our children to learn.

The role of public educators is not to teach one standardized and sanitized version of anything but to teach children how to think critically, objectively, and dynamically.  Educators teach children to go beyond who, what, when and where and to ask deeper questions of why and so what and how did this affect people.  Children are taught to base their conclusions upon a foundation of facts, as best as they are able to develop these at their state of learning.  Educators scaffold student learning over years so that children create more complete and complex understandings of what they learn.

To direct and support scaffolded learning, school boards are required to annually review and adopt the curricular standards that guide student learning.   Adoption is posted on a board agenda and  made in a regular meeting of the school board.  Critical thinking skills are embedded in all adopted curricula.  

Pedagogical Specialists Decide Instruction

A teacher’s academic freedoms lay in how the teacher meets the group and individual learning needs of the children in their classes by designing teaching that causes all children to learn.  Classroom teachers, as pedagogical specialists, decide how the curricula will be taught.  Teachers are trained professionally to consider the nature of what is to be learned and the best teaching/learning strategies.  Different content and skills and dispositions about learning require different teaching and this teaching may differ within a content or skill lesson depending upon the needs and abilities of learners.  A teacher chops the curriculum into bites that can  be taught and learned successfully and uses the art and science of teaching to teach each bite.  The “how to teach” decision is the teachers.

These two decisions – what curriculum will be taught and how the curriculum will be taught – are tied together by administrative evaluation of teaching and learning.  Administrators exercise quality control decisions.  These decisions are based on statute and proven practice over time.

New Demands on Decision Makers

Bob Dylan sang “… the times, they are a-changing…”.  His words presage a challenge in public education today regarding who decides what is taught and how it will be taught.  The issue of these challenges is monumental, because these decisions affect not only the education of children today but how education shapes the future thinking and behavior of the adults these children will become.  Who decides these things is important.  Will the decisions be based upon statutory authority or upon the challenges of the moment?

Many school districts around the country are embattled in a public argument by non-educators wanting to determine curricula, the teaching of curricula, and the ways in which schools treat different categories of children.  A polarization of people based upon a laundry list of issues – a person’s success in realizing or not realizing the American Dream, identification with partisan leaders, cultural identity, empowerment as a member of the traditional majority, a preferred version of history, support of pac-funding, and fear of others unlike oneself – is causing an historical challenge to teaching and learning.  A focal point of the confrontation is the determination of what stories of events, facts, and interpretations of the human experience will be taught in school classrooms and how will children of differing characteristics be treated in school.

I observe in the news that school board meetings are disrupted by local residents demanding the teaching of preferred and selective curriculum.  Board meetings are unraveling in chaotic bouts of audience yelling and disorder.  By the challengers’ design, the business of the school district is stopped because boards cannot conduct their posted agenda.  If the Board wants to conduct its business, the Board must acquiesce to the demands of the disrupters.  Board members are physically confronted at board meetings and in the community.  

Demands are made of school boards that only preferred versions of history are taught, that literature reflects only mainstream writing, white authors and their points of view, and that the diverse and rich heritage of our nation be narrowed to exclude the stories of and by anyone who is not like these curriculum challengers.  I read of school boards abandoning their approved policies of diversity, equality, and equity in the face of these demands.  

Statutory Processes for Disagreements

In our republican form of representative government, we elect members from the constituency to serve as decision-makers.  Our constitutional design is to create a control of government at the closest local level – state, legislative district, county and town, and school district.  Lay, not professional, officials are elected and serve terms of office that are regularly open for re-election.  The ballot is intended as the electorates’ opportunity to choose leaders based upon their pre-election statements and history.  A qualified person in disagreement with local decisions can run for office in the next calendared election.  The loss of an election is an intended consequence when the electorate does not agree with an official’s decisions.

A second intended process for change is for those in disagreement to participate in the agendized discussions of government.  For example, attend a school board meeting, volunteer to serve on district committees, and engage with the school board and administration.  Regular meetings of the school board are not public meetings where those in attendance vote on matters.  Regular meetings are open to the public with agendized opportunities for persons to speak directly to the board.  Committee participation requires more “roll up your sleeves and get involved in the details” work.  In most districts with board members, faculty and staff, and parents involved in committee work, committees are where different ideas are freely discussed and reasoned recommendations are formulated for Board consideration. 

Thirdly, the ballot provides the electorate an opportunity to remove an elected official.  Article 13, Section 12 of the WI Constitution describes the process for recalling an official one year after being elected.  No reasons for a recall are required to be given, according to the Constitution.  Members of the community in disagreement with the decisions of elected officials have a clear pathway to change their elected decision makers through recall.  Wisconsin is 2nd in the nation in filing petitions for recalling local school board members (CA is 1st).  Recall is an intended consequence when the electorate does not agree with an official’s decisions.  This is a clear statement of who decides and how decisions are made.

The recall process, though distracting, does not disrupt the proper and regular business of a school board.  It is intended to cause a change in who decides and potentially what is decided.  In the mean time, timely decisions of the school board, such as approving budgets, procuring school supplies and approving payment of bills, hiring and employing school personnel, legislating policy, and approving school calendars, go on.

Contrary to statutory change, disruption and chaos are intended to make the confrontation of loud voices the new “who decides” what is taught and how it is taught for school district decisions.  Already I observe school board presidents ending board meetings without completing a posted agenda because of a hostile take over the board room.  I read of agendas being changed to avoid items of controversy.  I read that boards are limiting or eliminating opportunities for their community to speak at board business meetings.  Board members report being threatened at their meetings, their places of business, and at home by those in disagreement with them.  Each of these reactions is counter to the statutory duties of a school board but deemed necessary at the time.

Although Thomas Jefferson wrote, “A little rebellion now and then can be a good thing”, he did not advocate an abandonment of majority rule, representative government, or approval of mob rule.  Making a clear and cogent argument is one thing; closing down the meeting where arguments are to be presented is quite different.

Is This The New Normal of School Governance: Children Pay Attention To This

The consequence of disrupting the business of a school board is not just a change of decisions.  The unintended/intended outcomes assure that the next crucial and controversial decision of the district will not be decided by the board but by the presence of loud and disruptive voices  It is probable that any group adopting these strategies will be able to force the elected representatives of school government to accommodate their demands if the board is to conduct its required business.  

At the end of the day, adults in the community must remember that our children are watching.  What and how we teach them in the school house matters a great deal to their continuing education.  What and how adults behave in the business of the school house matters a great deal to how these children will behave as citizens of the future.  An unintended consequence of disruptive and chaotic behavior is to teach that our children that disruptive behavior is an accepted norm.

Hypocrisy: Know Its Bounds

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“My hypocrisy knows no bounds.”  The line from the movie Tombstone fit the character of Doc Holliday, who, as portrayed in the movie, walked on both sides of the line of law and order.  Sometimes a memorable line from a movie gives us something to consider.  In this case, Doc’s perception of his own hypocrisies tells us how to understand the possibility our own.  Our line should be “…my hypocrisy knows its bounds”.

Take Away

Health conditions, swirling arguments, and deeply held wants in the Time of COVID make it difficult to form some decisions.  Is it safe for children and teachers to be in school classrooms?  Is it safe for children to engage in school athletics and activities?  Recommendations by the CDC and DHS are changing – some changes being medical and others political.  Professional organizations, like pediatricians, mental health workers, teacher unions, and state athletic associations weigh in with position statements.  Parental voices are both silent and loud.  The intention of all is to influence school-based decisions.  What to do?

What do we know?

Conditions and Information will continue to change.  An argument made today may fail if infection and death rates surge and the same argument may swell if those data diminish.  New treatments provide promise, but the true goal is an efficacious vaccine and widespread vaccination.

What works in one community may not work in another.  In a neighboring state high school football and soccer seasons are under way while in this state there is admonishment to delay fall contact sports to spring.

Different people hold to different levels of risk.  Death due to COVID as a very low percentage of those infected suggests that all community activity can be justified.  Death is permanent – you can re-schedule school and games but you cannot reschedule a lost life.  Take your pick of statement – you may be correct in the end.  Or, you may be corrected.

What to do?  Hello, Doc Holliday.  Don’t be a hypocrite.  Find your high ground and keep to the strictures of that position.  Be consistent to your beliefs.  But, also understand that oppositional beliefs are present and in our representative form of government your beliefs may not become the local policies.

Why is this thus?

Decisions about school are public decisions and the public expects to participate in school decision-making.  Participation is built into school board practices and procedures by state statute and local policy.  School board work is our nation’s most grass root level of local government.  Mail, e-mail, texts, phone calls, personal conversations, and turnouts at school board meetings, in-person and remote, are expected by elected board members.  In isolated circumstances, even targeted calling out and protest directed at the person befall a board member.  Participatory decision-making sometimes is uncomfortable ground, especially in critical times.

Some confuse participatory decision-making with majority rule.  They are not the same.  While the public deserves to and must be heard, their opinions need not form the final decision.  Additionally, decision makers need to keep a perspective between loud voices and the greater community.  Often, repetitively vocal citizens appear to speak for a greater number than they are.  Two dozen constant voices do not speak for a community of 10,000.

To do

The the greatest extent possible, a School Board will know the bounds of its hypocrisies by doing the following.

  • Listen to everyone constantly and consistently.  Every speaker, writer, and e-mailer deserve the courtesy of the Board’s attention.
  • Do not allow personalities to color arguments.  Consider the argument regardless of the speaker’s personality.  It is too easy to find irritability in what you know about the speaker, but don’t.  Listen to the merits of each argument without prejudice.
  • Some are more or less articulate than others.  Do not mentally correct their grammar, listen to their ideas.  A speaker does not have to speak in complete and coherent sentences to make a speech.
  • Do not personalize.  Although all outcomes are personal, make the decision-making process impersonal.  Self-interest is at the heart of most communication to the School Board.  If you know this to be true, do not be surprised or put off when you hear it.  Treat it for what it is.
  • To greatest degree possible, base decisions on facts.  One man’s facts may be another man’s fiction, but there are building blocks in reliable and valid data.  When you find it, use it.
  • Set parameters and be flexible within those parameters.  Good decisions for large group behavior are not pinpoints but set parameters that allow for a variety of acceptable behaviors within stated boundaries.  Boards need to set their boundaries and give school administration and staff the opportunity to develop options within those boundaries.
  • If the basis for your final decision is proven wrong, be prepared to make a more current and corrected decision.  Change is a constant.  You may be faulted for a decision that does not work out; you will be damned for sticking to a decision after you know it does not work.
  • Don’t be a hypocrite.  Do the proper work.  Find your high ground.  Declare the decision and enact the decision.  And, monitor how your decision works.

The big duh

We watch our favorite sports team and understand and accept that how the team’s game plan changes.  A football team, for example, plans for its competition weeks in advance.  Hence, we expect a game plan and team practicing of that game plan.  However, when the game is underway, we watch our quarterback call an audible play.  He sees conditions across the line of scrimmage that the game plan did not anticipate.  He calls an audible and changes the play on the spot.

COVID is a humongous audible play.  All the players are adjusting rapidly to life in a pandemic that was not in the game plan.  School boards are quarterbacks considering the facts across the line of scrimmage in the state and community and they are calling audibles as the facts and conditions and guidance evolve.

Listen.  Rely on facts.  Provide clear details in each audible.  Be consistent in enacting decisions.  Allow for flexibility within the parameters of your decision.  Do not accept hypocrisy.