Posted on 05/04/2017 7:19:50 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Despite their apolitical image, school boards, by their own admission, are anything but. "In the education arena, local governance and community ownership won big on the ballots," Katherine Shek wrote in a recap of last year's election results in the April 2017 issue American School Board Journal. "Georgia voters said no to the state taking over low-performing public schools."
"Voters in Massachusetts rejected the expansion of charter schools." Shek is the manager of the National School Boards Action Center. The American School Board Journal is published by the National School Boards Association.
"In Massachusetts, more than 200 local school boards passed resolutions against expanding charter schools, according to WBUR, Boston's NPR news station," Shek wrote. "In Georgia, parents and teachers took to social media to send messages against the proposed state takeover and in support of public schools."
"Building on this energetic movement, there's no time like the present for public education advocates to make their voices heard." In the grand tradition of public school advocacy, Shek indicates it is "for the children" that school boards are lobbying and electioneering: "Misleading rhetoric coupled with budget cuts and proposals to divert public funds to private schools are threatening the continued success of our 50 million children in public schools," she asserts.
Continued success? Even success might be a bit of a reach.
The problem with the educational system is that there is no one to challenge them. The union, the school board, the teachers are all one and the same. The buy off the politicians and they are free to do as they will.
I don’t know where the author is from, but here in Pennsylvania school boards have been bare-knuckled political for as long as anyone can remember.
The unions generally stack the deck by having their members run for seats in an adjoining district (and vice-versa). Since turnout in those elections is very low they generally get away with it.
Hard to think of any recent teaching jobs that weren’t filled through nepotism or political patronage.
Tell me about it....we are in the midst of school board elections here. And when I was elected to a large community college board in 1991 I thought it was non partisan...Ha..that’s when I began my political education.
School boards apolitical?
In what alternate universe?
They have always served as a first level in the political cursus honorum. Certainly in urban politics.
Then, he made school boards!
The above apparently came from Mark Twain decades ago. So in more than a century, Twain's apt description still applies!
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