The Role of the School Board

Tanner Johnson

Learning Targets-

1) Students will be able to explain the history behind the school board system.

2) Students will be able to define the 5 steps the make an effective state/local school board.

3) Students will be able to explain what the Virginia State Board of Education does and why it is important.

Introduction

Have you ever watched a school board meeting before? What happened? Was it boring and the members were just going on and on about something that seems like it does not matter? Or was it chaotic with people screaming and protesting while the school board members lash out at criticism directly to the crowds face? Which ever way was happening, it was all part of what makes school boards unique. They have a connection to the public unlike any other governing body. This is a good and bad thing. School boards play a role in all aspects of how a school is ran so therefore when you allow parents, students, and even unaffiliated people to come in and address concerns, it can lead to chaos or to immense change. School boards are the meeting ground for the public and a breeding ground for scrutiny and change.

Discussed in this lesson is where school boards came from, the role of each level within the system, the importance of school boards as well as how they fail, and how you as a future teacher can get involved. When reading this lesson, think about your hometown school board or even just the public schools you attended. Think about how the school was ran, was it bad? Was it good? Use the knowledge you gain from this lesson to judge your school district and ask yourself, did my school district live up to the goal and vision they proposed? If not how can my school district change for the better?

The History of the School Board System-

We all have heard of the school board, but where it came from is lesser known. We may think the public school system is relatively simple and straight forward but it is a multilayered and complex system with deep roots from the societal advancement in the colonial era (Illinois Association of School Boards, n.d., para. 1-3). The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first colony to ever implement a system similar to that of the school boards we have today. School used to run without the guidance of anyone. But through the growth of the colony there became a need for leaders. It began with a simple citizens committee which controlled parts of the schools in the colony but had little authoritative control (Illinois Association of School Boards, n.d., para. 3). It was not required to even have a committee until 1826, so a lot of schools were still running themselves. For over 100 years there was no official governing body to education in the colonies. In 1826 it became law for all Massachusetts schools to have a school board attached to the districts or towns affiliated (Illinois Association of School Boards, n.d., para. 3). The school board system evolved after this law and it paved the way for how important school boards would become in the decades that followed.

Sketch of what the town and schools would have looked like.

An example of schools in the colony.

The State Board of Education in the Modern Day-

Below is a link to view a Padlet that highlights the roles of each level in the school board system.

School Board Success, Why is it Important?

We as former public school students never knew the secret behind how our public school worked. Maybe we even experienced systematic issues in our schools. What goes on behind the scenes fundamentally creates the schooling environment. The policies school boards implement are not always sunshine and rainbows, they can unleash a storm onto the publics schools in a district and the community as a whole (Griffin & Ward, 2006). Maeroff directly approaches this issue when he states that school boards have an influence on the community which in turn directly affects its inhabitants (Maeroff, 2010). This is why success in a school board is essential. There are steps that the members of a school board can implement that have a high success rate (Griffin & Ward, 2006). The steps go as follows:

1) Focus on student achievement

School boards positions high standard education at the front, this is done with quality teachers and a rigorous curriculum

2) Allocate resources to needs

School boards knows how to allocate resources to assist students and families with different needs

3) Watch the return on investment

The school board watches their work in action, whether or not it is working/failing and changing what is needed before it impacts a school

4) Use data

When a school board uses the data they gather from policy making to see if it is successful. Publishing this data allows communities to see what is happening as well.

5) Engage the communities they serve

When a school board engages its community through parents, teachers, and patrons to further assist in creating a vision for the schools

As you can see, community is a backbone to school boards. When a school board is detached from its community it can severely damage the education of the students (Griffin & Ward, 2006).

Active participation is what makes school boards work. Local and state boards of education work in tandem to ensure the communities they serve are benefiting from the policies and decisions they are making.

Griffin & Ward state that the only way a school board can succeed is to have members that are dedicated and share a vision for success with combined leadership (Griffin & Ward, 2006).

Below are two videos, one shows a successful school board meeting, the other shows the opposite side, a chaotic meeting.

This is a compilation of school board meetings and issues that arose within them. These are always entertaining to watch.

You should not watch the entire thing, instead skip through. I wanted to show what an actual COVID impacted school board meeting looks like.

What do you see when you watch those videos?

It is clear that school boards attract all kinds of people. Their purpose and their role is to engage with the community, whether that means political/public discourse or addressing concerns from parents and teachers. It is up to how well the members in the board can handle the people in the crowd, below is an example of disrespectful and unprofessional school board members.

It is important to see both sides, the good and the bad, especially when it comes to school boards. They represent the community as a whole and the members behavior reflects on the public schools in the district.

School boards are open to criticism just as much as a government is. It is no secret that some school boards fail on their proposed goals and instead damage a community (Maeroff, 2010).

According to Arthur Griffin & Carter Ward (2006), Five Characteristics of an Effective School Board: a Multifaceted Role Defined, school boards exist to keep the “public” in public education. I believe that it is important to understand where school boards came from to get a sense of the importance of a school board overall. School boards are often forgotten about or their importance in a community is often overlooked (Griffin & Ward, 2006). So, by knowing where they came from it can give you a sense of why they are still around. Without a school board system there is no public school. The state board of education creates a home for other school boards and a safe and engaging learning environment for the hundreds of thousands of students within a state. I believe that by having the knowledge of what a state board of education does, it can give you an entrance into a possible route for potential change that you may seek for your child or as a teacher. Lastly, I think to make change, you would need to know how a successful school board can be created from a failing one. When we become teachers, we will hit a point where we may want to change a curriculum or stress concerns about students' well being to a school board. By knowing how a school board works, it can be the light at the end of the tunnel for us as future teachers.

Quiz Time!

Where was the first school board created?

A) Virginia

B) Massachusetts

C) Rhode Island

D) New Mexico

What educational philosophy best fits a teacher that requires their students to participate in a public school board meeting with their parents. Its for an assignment in which they must pose a question about a problem in their school.

A) Progressivism

B) Perennialism

C) Reconstructionism

D) Essentialism

References

Griffin, A., & Ward, C. (2006, March 21). Five characteristics of an effective School board: A Multifaceted ROLE, DEFINED. Edutopia. Retrieved September 27, 2021, from https://www.edutopia.org/five-characteristics-effective-school-board.

Illinois Association of School Boards. (2014). The Historic and Political Role of the School Board. https://www.iasb.com/IASB/media/Documents/HistoricPoliticalRoleBoards.pdf

Maeroff, G. (2010). School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy. (1st edition). St. Martins Press LLC. p. 1-30.

Norfolk Public Schools. (n.d.). School Board of the City of Norfolk; overview. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.npsk12.com/schoolboard.

U.S Department of Education. (n.d.). Laws & guidance. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www2.ed.gov/policy/landing.jhtml?src=pn.

Virginia Department of Education. (n.d.). Student and school support; Board of education. Retrieved September 27, 2021, from https://www.doe.virginia.gov/support/index.shtml

Wills, B., Beckham, J. (n.d.). School Boards - responsibilities, duties decision-making and legal basis for local school board powers. StateUniversity.com. Retrieved September 16, 2021, from https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2391/School-Boards.html.

Answers- Question 1- B, Question 2- C

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