(This week’s civic education and engagement column from Danville’s The Republican newspaper.)
Whenever asked to speak to a community group about serving on the school board, I’d describe it as a terrible job that nobody should be required to handle. The comment always provoked some polite chuckles, and I’d respond by stating I was completely serious.
The biggest reason serving on a school board is a terrible job is that almost nobody understands what’s involved and why things are done that way. Most patrons assume board members have a tremendous amount of power and the ability to do things as they see fit. In reality, local school board members and other elected officials are constrained by a long list of laws and policies that have been dictated by state and federal governments. As elected officials, they oversee bureaucracies – bureaucracy being defined as a government organization managed by hired employees instead of elected officials – but exert little direct control over those bureaucracies’ daily operations and decisions.
Among the complaints that made parents and other patrons the angriest, probably 95 percent were the result of things our schools had to (or couldn’t) do because of state and federal laws. Most of the same complainers were also angry that the school board didn’t have the guts to ignore those other layers of government. After all, we were in charge of local schools, so we should do what local residents (or at least that one) wanted us to do, right? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Failing to obey state and federal laws is not only blatantly illegal, but it can carry steep financial penalties that must be paid out of the board member’s personal assets.
Complaints themselves are another remarkably unpleasant part of the role. Board members don’t just serve during their monthly meetings. In the community’s eyes, they’re always on duty. Doesn’t matter where you are, doesn’t matter what you’re doing, there are plenty of people who think your first priority is to drop everything and listen to whatever has them annoyed. I counsel new board members to hold off on grabbing the frozen stuff at the supermarket until they’re ready to check out. I’ve watched mine thaw as someone berated me about a teacher being unfair to their child or a coach not understanding the game. Anything short of immediate, complete agreement with their stance only made them angrier.
The average patron also has no idea about how Indiana school funding works and the role their tax dollars play. More than a few are convinced that their taxes are too high because those idiot school board members just love to spend as much as possible on unnecessary things. So much of my time as a board member involved listening and trying to help the complainer understand the laws or other realities. In the end, most remained angry with me, instead of at the laws or conditions that mandated the actions my fellow board members and I took.
Another common beef about school board members is the perception they won’t stand up to school superintendents and other administrators. “They’re not living up to the checks and balances” is a common accusation – but those alleged checks and balances don’t exist in the state laws determining how schools should function. School board and superintendents aren’t supposed to be adversaries. They’re supposed to function as members of the same team. The school board makes high-level decisions and sets the course for the district, then turns to the superintendent to carry out the day-to-day work, much like a corporate board of directors does with the CEO it hires. (We should probably start calling superintendents CEOs, because that’s what they are.)
Finally, many people believe serving on a school board is tremendously lucrative. I always smiled when someone thought it was my full-time job complete with a six-figure salary. I suppose you could call it a six-figure salary, but only if you counted the two digits to the right of the decimal point. Until last year, Indiana law set the maximum school board member salary at $2,000 per year. (It’s now ten percent of the district’s starting teacher pay.) Earning that whopping salary normally involved upwards of 300 hours of my time across the year – the equivalent of 8 or 9 full workweeks. In fact, because school board took so much time away from my business, serving actually reduced my overall income. I did get a free pass to athletic events, so there’s something.
If you’re thinking about making a run for your community’s school board, don’t start the process until you sit down with at least one – and preferably more – board members to better understand the realities of the job. You’re likely to discover that the reason you’ve decided to run involves something you can’t change without breaking the law. It’s a lot less stressful to discover that fact before you get elected and learn you can’t fulfill the promises you’ve been making to everyone you know.