Cleveland Plain Dealer - Editorial
Page (3-C)
Sunday, August 18, 1996
No splinters on this board - Little is accomplished when dissenters are
silenced by editorial writer Kevin O’Brien
Ever wonder how public education’s happy little gremlins can get so much done in a
day? Consider how easily a hare-brained idea ("reform") can be transformed from
an obscure master’s thesis (qualitative research), to a series of consulting
contracts (wasted tax money) to a best educational practice (holy writ).
Why? Because the people elected to protect the public interest are so busy
team-building, they don’t have time to glance at the well-intentioned blatherings of
education professors and say, "Goodness me, what hooey."
The process of turning school boards into teams has been going on for years. In fact,
if you live in a place where policy and budgetary decisions are treated as matters in
which there is more than one side, consider yourself lucky. You’re in a fortunate
minority.
Readers from all over northeast Ohio who jangle my phone tell a depressingly similar
tale of quick and painless board meetings in which decisions clearly made in advance are
merely formalized and contention is scrupulously avoided. If you ever wanted a home on the
range, just visit your local school board. You’ll seldom hear a discouraging word.
No one wants a board like the one Cleveland had in the bad old days of not so long ago
-- that hybrid soapbox, political-career launching pad, crony-hiring hall and hotbed of
personal vanity. What’s required is something between a love-in and the Civil War.
Unfortunately, it appears that far too many boards find politics so repugnant that they
refuse to acknowledge that theirs is none other than a political role.
When a gentleman I know sought appointment to an unexpired term on his town’s
board, his prospective colleagues asked him during the interview whether he would be
willing not to dissent publicly on the occasions when he might represent a minority view.
He said no. Someone else got the job.
When the Hudson School District had its controversy over a history textbook, the
whining about "divisiveness" was downright hysterical. School board member
Kenneth J. Claypoole said he didn’t like the book and explained his reasons. This
majority ruled against him.
Claypoole, however, made the mistake of breaking ranks, and not for the first time.
Now, the law of the barnyard has taken over. Find the one who’s different and peck
him to death.
A half-dozen teenagers are now watching Claypoole instead of MTV, which would be good
news expect that they’re trying to intimidate him. Their elders are complaining that
school board meetings take too long because he wants to debate issues.
Bearing in mind that the Hudson school board is a public body responsible for
allocating public funds, how can anyone complain when the issues before it are explored in
detail? That’s what school boards are for. Or at least they used to be.
These day, school boards are admonished to "speak with one voice", a
consultant-borne malady that superintendents are eager to spread. There are four main
motivations:
It’s easier to pass levies in a district where dissent is muzzled than in one
where debate is open.
- The status quo is always, always, always maintained no matter how bad it gets. No one
talks about problems, ergo there are no problems.
- It tames the public. A break in a board’s united front give unhappy and
disenfranchised elements of the community a leader behind whom they can rally.
- Power remains in the hands of the administration. Most school board members seem to
forget who works for whom, and end up doing the bidding of the "experts."
The result is that boards often end up serving as public relations agents for their
districts and buffers for administrators, rather than as advocates for the people who
elect them.
The biggest, farthest-reaching school board in these parts, the State Board of
Education, has a longstanding interest in team-building.
For years now, the board has gone off on "retreats." Activities have included
putting little puzzles together and spending quality time an a Mohican State Park parking
lot while roped together and blindfolded.
My favorite exercise was the one in which they had a little relay race across a mat
marked in squares that beeped if they weren’t stepped on in the proper sequence. What
a perfect metaphor for today’s school board "teams": Don’t you dare
get out of step.
The 1996 retreat took place last week. The agenda included a lesson on "speaking
with one voice" and a proposal that the board develop a code of conduct for its
members that would tighten the screws on the precious few who have and can articulate
thoughts not in line with the governor and the Ohio Department of Education.
Fortunately, they never got around to it. Board member Diana M. Fessler fired off a
letter about it to Gov. George V. Voinovich and to a slew of newspapers. She had a lot to
say on the subject of freedom of speech. The muzzle apparently has gone back to the
designers for refitting.
And how was the retreat for Fessler? "It was like a cross between an Amish
shunning and an advanced case of leprosy," she said.
Let’s hear it for independent school board members, wherever they may be. Somebody
has to feed the chickens.
O'Brien is deputy director of The Plain Dealer’s editorial pages.
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