The first of the many political flyers to hit my mailbox came today. In my little town we have elections in May. Today the one for the Republican Board of Education candidates arrived today. I was very interested to read it because this is the first election since my kids entered school in 2007. After experiencing two years of our community school, I was eager to hear about their ideas on how they were going to make some changes and what they had planned to improve the education that my children are receiving. Three candidates, three big paragraphs. I have included all the sentences from each profile below that had anything to do with what they were planning on doing when they were on the Board of Education. So in other words, once you take out where they grew up, what their job is, and how many children they have, here is what was left:
Candidate #1-My fiscal conservatism will balance the needs of paying for an excellent education with the needs of keeping taxes low as possible.
Candidate #2-Physical fitness and the health of our children is a top focus of mine.
Candidate #3-I want our children to get the best education available, but am equally concerned about how effectively the community’s tax dollars are being spent. I am very frugal and will do everything I can do to ensure that we are getting the best value for our money.
Where’s the vision?
4 responses so far ↓
I got a kick out of a school board candidate’s ad in the paper recently. Vote for me. I’m a business owner and lifelong taxpayer in this county.
It’s the old high quality, fast (efficient), inexpensive triangle in business. You can often get two together, but never three. Funny how people running for school board always elect for the high quality & inexpensive education. Guess where that leaves efficiency of effort?
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@ Paul
Why is it that only in schools do we give people who may have absolutely no experience in education absolute control and then wonder why it isn’t all it can be. Imagine if a fortune 500 company elected to its board people who don’t understand business. We tolerate it for school boards. I don’t mean to knock the good people who give their time and talent to serving on these boards but too many people use the position in the wrong way or run for the wrong reasons.
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Bill Genereux Reply:
March 21st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Charlie,
What would your alternative proposal be? I really don’t like how the Feds have so much control over public schools either. If not local “unqualified” control, what?
I wonder if school boards shouldn’t be comprised of shared governance, with some of the seats always filled by professional educators and some always filled by elected local citizens?
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@ Bill
That’s always the harder part coming up with an alternative. Some friends and I have passed around the idea of making schools teacher owned. This gives control into the hands of the experts and also makes them accountable for failing schools. Giving students choices then of which school to attend makes it all the more important for schools to be well run. Just one idea…. probably full of holes but an idea at least.
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