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Nearly every public official says that they care about education. Officials all claim that teachers matter, that their contribution to society is honorable, and that their voice in the debate about how to improve education is important.

What I have found from trying to start a public conversation about education reform is that much of what public officials say about their concern for education and their respect for teachers is nothing more than lip service, and that there are some out there who adamantly refuse to have any conversation about education.

A few years ago, wanting to get more involved in the local educational-political landscape in Hawaii, I ran for and was elected to a neighborhood board. Every month, we heard from the HPD, HFD, governor’s office, mayor’s office, senators, representatives, council members, and appropriate representatives from HECO, the Board of Water Supply, the department of Permitting and Planning, and just about every other stakeholder for every issue ranging from homelessness to potholes — except for education. It seemed that the only department with which we had zero communication was the one place to which to which we entrust our most valuable and important resource — our kids.

I saw the board system as a potential pathway for communication between the DOE and the community. Unfortunately, between my student loans, low teacher pay, and high gas prices, I couldn’t afford to commute from my studio apartment in town to my school in Ewa Beach anymore, and I was forced to resign from the board to move, just as I was getting a grip on what opportunities might exist for bringing the board and the DOE closer together.

When a teacher at Campbell organized the Hawaii Teacher’s Work to the Rule protests that took place all over the island last spring, I tried tapping some of the potential I saw in the neighborhood board system.

I wrote to a half-dozen boards, asking to be on the agenda. I created handouts with pay comparisons between Hawaii and cities with comparable costs of living. I also included our dismal teacher-retention statistics (56 percent turnover every five years).

I wanted to ask the boards to write a letter to the governor to say that they were concerned about teacher retention rates and that there might be a link between teacher retention and student achievement, leaving whether or not they wished to connect that to teacher pay entirely up to the board.

A few were accommodating. A few wrote back to say that they already had full agendas. The chair of one board wrote to say that the February agenda was already full, but that he would ask the board if they had any interest in hearing me in March.

I mixed up emails and walked into a February meeting being held in an elementary school cafeteria, thinking I was on the agenda.

When I discovered my mistake, I smiled and apologized and said that I would gladly wait until the March meeting. The chairman of the board seemed agitated and told me that I should speak during the community-concerns portion of the meeting.

For any board to take an action, like writing a letter, the issue or presenter has to be on the agenda. Since I was going to ask for a letter to be sent, I asked if I could still be on the agenda for March if I still spoke that night. His response was, “We’ll see.”

When community concerns were brought up, he gestured to me to stand up. I stood up and gave an overview of the issue, but I stopped short of going all-in. I said that I wanted to save my full presentation for the next meeting so that I could request the board vote on writing a letter to the governor, if they found my position agreeable.

The chairman insisted that I should present right then, stating that this was my “one shot.” I was perplexed at his change in tone, but I knew the topic could be thorny, chalked his hesitancy up to the potential polarity of the issue, and thought that he would change his mind when I was done. I believed I had a reasonably universal message and was making a fairly benign request that was, in essence, an expression of concern for teacher retention and student achievement.

At the end of the meeting, I approached the chairman.

Before I even finished my question about returning, he put out his hands as if to stop me and said, “Absolutely not. Not under any condition.”

I was floored. He seemed so resolute and predetermined. I asked him why. He replied that he was the chair, and the chair sets the agenda, and I would not be on it. “That’s why.” He said.

I asked him if there was any particular reason.

“Because you’re not going to be.” He said. He went on to explain that he didn’t need a reason.

I thought that perhaps the pay issue was just too much of a hot-button issue, and asked about speaking about any other education-related issues like instructional time or community involvement.

No. Not this time. Not in the future. Never.

I told him that I was confused. He said that my confusion was noted and that our conversation was over, then he walked away.

I was stunned. There was a bitter irony to the out-of-hand refusal to listen to anything education-related while standing in an elementary school cafeteria.

The next morning, I thought that maybe I had made some misstep of which I was not aware in my approach. I wrote an email politely extending an olive branch and asking his advice on how I should go about things in the future in order to assuage whatever sensibilities I might have offended.

He wrote me back chastising me for showing up on the wrong night, stating that he was blocking my email, and telling me not to contact him again. He reiterated that he was the chairman, and he sets the agenda.

This single rejection would not be so hard-felt if it weren’t so endemic to the current political climate surrounding education. There will be no formal public conversation about improving education in that community – at least not from a teacher perspective.

I can’t think of anything more damaging to the cause of improving our schools or our education system than that kind of stonewalled rejection to entertain the concerns of a teacher for 10 minutes at a community board meeting that is designed for the sole purpose of connecting the community to the issues which affect them.

We have to stop erecting barriers to improving education and start opening up transparent conversations between the community, the DOE, and the teachers about how to best serve our students. The community has, at the least, as significant a stake in the Department of Education as they do in the Department of Permitting and Planning, and our communities should claim that stake. We have the forums to do that, and I would challenge the DOE and the neighborhood board system to come together and realize the value in opening up that kind of channel for communication, transparency, and accountability when working toward the common goal of bettering education.

Michael Wooten is a former sergeant in the U.S. Army and University of California Berkeley graduate who came to Hawaii as a Teach For America teacher in 2008. He earned his masters degree in education from the University of Hawaii and currently teaches English and film at James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach.