������Ƶ

The issue of an elected vs. appointed Board of Education (BOE) is before the electorate this November. Though both major candidates for governor have said they are content to abide by the wishes of the voters, it is doubtful that any governor could resist enhanced power and authority over education.

The last time this issue was raised was shortly after statehood. Many people at the time believed that by removing some authority from the legislature and the governor and placing that authority in an elected board, it would create more democratic politics and greater accountability to the people. The people in 1964 ratified the elected BOE over the objections of the governor and legislature.

Successive governors and legislatures learned to live with the elected BOE, but not without circumscribing its ability to take independent action. Lacking a funding source of its own, the BOE is subject to the whims and desires of the legislature and governor’s office through appropriations and expenditures.

Here, the BOE appears weak and incompetent. Though nominally in control of educational policy, the BOE has little beneficial effect upon it. Sitting atop the system, it is removed from the reality of the schools. Though “governed” by well-intending citizens, the primary qualification is name recognition or misidentification. And BOE members know little about the educational views of citizens, except when interest is whipped up by sensational, but educationally peripheral, issues. What we have is politicization without genuine democratic politics.

This tempts both the legislature and the governor to apply more mandates and controls. The more the mandates and controls, the weaker and more incompetent the BOE and DOE seem. Accusations accumulate, charges of educational mismanagement fester, educators feel demoralized, and parents wonder about keeping their children in the schools. Politicization abounds, but little changes.

The easy answer seems to be: dump it in the governor’s lap. At least, then, we shall have some ultimate accountability. Simply give up the democratic experiment in education.

No matter how enticing the alternative to an elected board is, the question of the appointed board simply substitutes one centralized command for another centralized command.

In education, we are learning that you just can’t mandate from on high what matters. No one is wise enough to say what will be educationally effective in a system of 180,000 children and 300+ schools. There are simply too many interacting variables.

Moreover, even if we did know which mandates would work, mandates are effective only in proportion to the level of surveillance. Ensuring that schools comply requires a commissar for every school and classroom.

Instead, we have never embraced the principle of social interaction: loosening centralized controls and allowing interacting individuals to exercise their own judgment in matters educational. It is a principle that governs market economies, as opposed to command economies. We now have a Soviet Union of an educational system that will never work. We need to create an educational governance system that establishes more arenas that are responsive to local democratic politics.

Interestingly, both gubernatorial candidates instinctively recognize the need to create local educational decision-making. But they have yet to suggest the governance structures that will enable this. It is clear, however, that choosing between an elected and appointed boards — retaining centralized command – is no solution at all to our educational ills.

Indeed, the legislature and the governor, at different times, sought to break up the system. The year before the current governor took office the Democrats in the legislature nearly enacted local control of the schools. And Governor Lingle rode into office in 2003 on a pledge to break up the centralized authority in the BOE and replace it with seven local boards. The Democrats’ efforts were given up at the last minute and Lingle’s efforts were thwarted by the Democrats. Though both reform proposals may have created more local politics in education, neither was connected to an educational purpose.

Policy Action #1: Create School Complex Boards with Real Educational Authority. The educationally significant arena for a democratic politics is the school complex (high school, feeder middle or intermediate schools, and feeder elementary schools). By establishing a complex-wide school board with real educational authority over all activities, educational decisions can be made that are sensitive to local conditions and needs. This would create approximately 48 school complex boards (excluding charter schools). Such boards would be elected from citizens of the local community, as well as include principals and representatives from each school in the complex serving in an ex officio capacity without vote.

This is the key provision for potential excellence in educational governance and educational achievement. It establishes the optimal arena for democratic politics and a configuration that is the best promise for educational achievement. It is optimal in size for democratic politics, since it is sufficiently small as to permit board candidates and the community electorate to interact in face-to-face fashion. It is also the best promise for educational achievement, since it encourages seamless and coordinated educational decision making across the school complex – and hence a student’s full school career.

The latter point deserves underscoring. The current governance system lacks coordination and encourages educator finger-pointing. High school teachers blame middle-school teachers for unprepared students, while middle-school teachers blame elementary-school teachers. And, of course, all three groups blame uninvolved parents and a bureaucratic state system. The point is to create a governance structure that encourages teachers, administrators, parents, and the local community to take responsibility for students across the entirety of their school years. By placing the final authority to hire staff, hire a complex head educator, as well as to set policy, at the school complex level, the governance conditions are created for educators to work together across the school levels for the good of each student.

This proposal differs from the major gubernatorial candidates’ platforms to simply empower school principals. Here school principals remain key personnel, but they are only single persons at single schools. It is the effort to harness individual schools into a coherent, cohesive, dynamic whole in the complex that enables a higher and deeper educational excellence.

Policy Action #2: Change the Composition and Function of the State BOE. Retain a State BOE, which if elected requires candidates to have served on a school complex board. Restrict the State BOE policymaking authority to only minimal issues of statewide concern.

With most authority for governance and operations moved to the school complex and school levels, the temptation for a State BOE to micromanage the schools is removed. The BOE would intervene in a school complex only in the rare case that it is engaging in educational malpractice.

Moreover, governance through school complex boards confines educational disaster to a single school complex. Though that would be regrettable, it is vastly preferable to the current situation in which damaging actions by the State BOE or DOE Superintendent engulf every school in the state.

Policy Action #3: Alter the role of the State Superintendent and the DOE. The superintendent would no longer play an executive managerial role, since that function would be moved down to school complex heads. Rather, the superintendent would have a facilitative function in bringing issues of statewide concern to the State BOE. The superintendent would continue to monitor the school complexes for compliance with state and federal laws, regulations, and programs. The superintendent would oversee a limited number of offices: (1) Finance and Accounting, (2) Evaluation, (3) Human Resources, (4) Research & Development, (5) Legal Affairs, (6) Capital Construction, and (7) System-wide Technology. Through the Office of Finance and Accounting, school complex funding would continue according to the current statewide weighted formula with only the minimal expenditures necessary to maintain these statewide offices. Nearly all school funding would be decided at the school complex level.

In summary, many other issues would have to be decided, but this framework offers a start. Beyond the facile issue of an elected vs. appointed board, it establishes how educational governance can be tailored to the task of true educational reform — reform that holds the greatest promise for educational excellence and more democratic politics in a state in dire need of both.