Peter Meyer, an accomplished journalist and author, is currently the editor of Education Next, has published an article entitled Five Lessons from Five Years on the School Board. Meyer recently finished two terms as a member of the Hudson Board of Education, a school district south of Albany along the Hudson River.
The article goes along way towards informing the recent decision of fellow board members to remove Jeffrey Hastie as Vice President of the New Rochelle Board of Education in order to deny him the opportunity to ascend to the position of President. In short, the removal of Hastie amounts to a last gasp of the old guard to maintain a level of control they have enjoyed for many years and now feeling slipping away in no small part due to the forced transparency brought about by Talk of the Sound. Hastie has been an advocate for open government since his school board campaign in 2009.
Meyer opens by quoting Andrew Jackson in his Farewell Address on March 4, 1837:
But you must remember, my fellow-citizens,
that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty,
and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.
It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government. (emphasis added)
Five Lessons from Five Years on the School Board:
1. Don’t underestimate the value of information
2. Don’t underestimate the bureaucracy’s desire to impede the flow of information
3. People do count
4. Don’t give up on democracy
5. The individual comes first
In the article, Meyer observes what we know so well in New Rochelle; how off-cycle elections discourage popular participation and empower special interests, the ways in which the bureaucracy tries to control the flow of information (and how school members aide and abet them), how even when voters defeat a proposed budget (in his case, by a 3-1 margin) the board can simply override the voters.
Meyer describes an exchange that gets to the heart of the failure of the New Rochelle Board of Education:
School boards are still constantly warned about micro-managing.
“You have to trust the professionals,” we were told by a consultant from our state school boards association at a board “retreat” last year.
“We have,” I countered, “and look where it has gotten us.”
Read the entire article here.
Meyer does a good job explaining the ways in which school boards participate in creating that failures. Our public education system is a failed system. It needs to be replaced.
