The School Board’s Problem With The Public

Serving as a member of the Board of Education is not your ordinary volunteer job. The agenda is always long, the stakes are always high, successes are taken for granted, and failures are never forgotten. So it is not surprising that Newtown’s current school board roster is embroiled in controversy — two controversies actually. The school district’s special education program is the subject of dozens of complaints from parents trying to secure an appropriate education for their children; Newtown’s two state legislators have asked for a state Department of Education probe of the local special education services. And the current bidding process for school transportation services has resulted in a complaint to the state Department of Labor Relations by the town’s popular school bus owner-operators, who believe their prospects to continue serving the town are being run off the road by administrators intent on replacing them with single bus company with the acquiescence of a compliant school board.

While we respect the commitment and sincerity of Newtown’s school board members as they wrestle with these and other tough issues, both the special education and bus transportation controversies have exposed a weakness in the board’s ability to engage with the public it serves and an overreliance on its paid administrators for information and guidance on policy matters. Their procedures and actions suggest, sometimes, that the people they are elected to represent exist for them only as shadows viewed through the scrim of a formal process, maintained and managed for them by the superintendent of schools, the district’s business director, and their subordinates. The distance and protection of this filter allows them to plead ignorance of the “specifics” of the urgent pleadings of parents of special education students, or to express surprise and resignation in a transportation contract bidding process that outflanks and thwarts a cadre of school bus owners and operators who have served the town with great distinction for many decades.

Evidence of the Board of Education’s withered relationship to the public can be found printed in every board agenda. It is a list of caveats that apply to public participation at school board meetings. Speakers, the board insists, must be “concise,” respectful,” they must not make reference to “specific persons,” they must “avoid repetition of comments made by other speakers,” and they must “limit comments to no more than three minutes.” The board is not obliged to answer any questions at its meetings. If someone wants an actual answer to a question, a form must be filled out and formally submitted. The process appears to be designed to ensure that school members hear either criticism or complaints only once, and then for no more than three minutes. With a little stoicism and patience, the unpleasantness passes quickly.

Just last week, the school board was still telling people, “When there is a complaint, it should be submitted in writing so that we can look at it and see what it is.” The request seems straightforward enough. But when so many of the parents The Bee has spoken with in reporting on the special education issue have asked to remain anonymous because they feel, rightly or wrongly, intimidated by school officials, the written complaint requirement may seem to some a device for “taking names.”

The Board of Education might be justified in believing that it does not face a special education crisis or a transportation crisis; state agencies may be the final judge of that. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the school board risks a serious crisis of public confidence unless it fundamentally changes the way in which it relates to the people who elected them. Board members may have to put up with some longwinded and repetitious disrespect, but we urge them to have courage. As Winston Churchill put it, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”