Reimagining the School Board

During the “solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish” period of the Middle Ages, man realized that, unlike jellyfish, they have brains.  “Let’s use them” became the battle cry, and the Renaissance was born.  Folks began to think, and the earth began to move around the sun, instead of the other way around.

Later, a band of ne’er-do’-wells in the British colonies felt that the course of human events was making it necessary to dissolve the bands that connected them to the crown royal (the King, not the whiskey), so they stopped drinking tea and formed a new nation, conceived in some pub in Boston, and dedicated to the proposition that someday they will work on that equality thing.

These were critical periods, characterized by specific events which necessitated having a critical period.  Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez is having her own critical period.  Based on events and circumstances, she has entered a rebirth of education.  What began as “reimagining teaching,” and then “reimagining education,” and now known as “reimagining and co-designing education,” is her mission to convince folks that the schools revolve around a central office.

Like a politician making a crutch out of a calamity, we ought not let this critical period pass us by without change, change that we can believe in.  I’m speaking of changing, reimagining, the Board of Education.

Most thoughts and actions targeting an overhaul of a board of education, speak of changing it’s political and ideological composition only.  Unlike school boards in the U.S. with FBI and Justice Department contacts on their social media accounts, Hartford’s Board doesn’t have a serious issue with politics or ideology which would put it on the critical period calendar.

However, the structure and processes of this board has allowed district leadership to become an educational leviathan.  To the leadership, the Board is a tethered lapdog; poor, nasty, and still drinking tea.  It is time to dissolve those tethers, those bands of connection, and imagine a board where some day, little black children and little white children will join together and say, “I am a Hartford student!”

There is nothing new about tearing down municipal related structures and rebuilding them.  Mayors will sometimes have their bathrooms torn down and remodeled on the cheap by using city contractors. Similarly, there have been instances in the past where school boards in the U.S. have been disbanded and reconfigured.

These instances have typically occurred in response to concerns about poor performance, governance issues, or financial mismanagement, such as the East Ramapo Central School District in New York in 2015, and the Detroit Public Schools Community District Board of Education in Michigan in 2009.  Oh, and of course, the Hartford Board of Education in 1997.

Often the teardown and rebuild is done in the form of election recalls…elections have consequences.  Elected board members are removed from the school board through a petitioned recall election.  Between 2009 and 2022 in the U.S., there was an average of 28 recall efforts against an average of 66 school board members each year.  School board members often call these efforts “political retaliation.”  However, mismanagement of funds, conflicts with administrators or teachers, refusing to listen to their constituents, and violating open meeting laws, are some of the reasons given for the recall efforts.

In Hartford, let’s start with the standing committees.

Hartford’s Board of Education has 4 standing committees: Family & Community Engagement Committee; Finance & Audit Committee; Policy Committee; and Teaching & Learning Committee. 

These committees are created to address specific issues or topics, to study and make recommendations on specific issues related to the operation of the school district.  Normally, these subcommittees typically consist of a few members of the board, as well as experts and stakeholders in the relevant area.

The whole idea behind the committee concept, is that it allows board members to focus on specific areas of the district's operations and can help ensure that decisions are well-informed and based on the best available information. They can also provide an opportunity for stakeholders in the district to have a voice in the decision-making process. That’s the idea, anyway.

In Hartford, these committees are a joke.  Board Member Jim Schmerling is a member of the Policy, and Finance & Audit Committees.  In 2022, he attended 1 monthly meeting for each committee.  There is no studying of the issues, they take whatever nicely organized PDF presentations are created by the Superintendent’s team (or ERS) as their study guide.

 Their only recommendation, based on the studying of the information provided to them by the Superintendent, is to move it to another committee, where the same presentation is given and where the same amount of “studying of the issue” is done, and then to recommend a Regular Meeting “Aye” vote.

Let’s be clear, members of the board’s committees, most likely do not have the time to devote to issues brought before them, nor do they have expertise on specific issues before them to replace that important element of time.  They are tethered helplessly to the administration.

A reimagined board of education would have four committees.  Give them what ever cute little moniker you wish, but there would be a committee for issues of policy, issues involving awarding a contract to an outside entity, personnel and appointment issues, and a committee for budget issues.

Each committee must seat 5 board members.  There would also be, for each committee, non-voting seats for a current or former teacher with at least 5-years’ experience teaching, a current or former principal with 5-years’ experience doing principal things, a junior or senior high school student (preferably, with less than 5-years’ high school experience), and a member of the community who has been a member of the community for at least 10 years.  These non-board member additions exist as an unofficial advisory council to the board members and assist in the vetting process.

Each committee would hold a monthly meeting.  If the purpose of the meeting involved an individual, business, or a non-profit, that entity, free from the shackles of the administration, must present themselves to the board for informational purposes and possible discussion.  The superintendent’s team would provide committee members with their own version of an informational presentation and engage with the discussion.  Meetings would not be choreographed by the Superintendent and her team.

Only after each issue has been fully vetted to the satisfaction of the majority committee members, or rescheduled for further vetting by the majority, can the issue be transferred to another committee (if necessary), or transferred to the Regular Meeting for the board’s open public approval requirement.

The monthly Regular public meetings would be restructured as well.  Issues appearing before any of the monthly committee meetings, would first be introduced as New Business at the Regular Meeting, and then moved to the correct committee by a majority of members at the Regular Meeting.

Any issue appearing before the Regular Meeting for an approval vote, must be introduced to the public at the meeting, who then have the right to comment on or question that issue.  Following public comment on the issue, the board would either vote for approval or vote to send the issue back to committee for further vetting.  The New Business portion of the Regular Meeting would also be used for public comments which do not correspond to issues which will be heard during this vote for approval process.

Not all boards of education Googled “board of education” and operate in the same way. While there are some commonalities in terms of their roles and responsibilities, such as overseeing the policies and practices of their local school district and making decisions related to curriculum, funding, and hiring, there can be significant variations in how these responsibilities are carried out.

Many boards of education have advisory councils to assist them in decision-making. Advisory councils are groups of individuals who are appointed or elected to provide input, feedback, and advice to the board of education on various issues related to the operation of the school district.

Advisory councils can take many different forms and can vary depending on the needs and priorities of the district. Some common types of advisory councils include parent and community advisory councils, student advisory councils, curriculum advisory councils, and diversity and inclusion advisory councils.

A few examples of school board advisory councils in the U.S. are, the Baltimore City Schools Parent and Community Advisory Board, Seattle’s African American Male Advisory Committee, Houston’s Curriculum and Instruction Advisory Committee, NYC’s Multilingual Learners Advisory Council, and the Clark County School District’s Diversity and Equity Advisory Committee. 

There are also many groups outside of school districts that have formed for the sole purpose of advising school boards. These groups are often made up of experts in education policy, finance, and other areas, as well as parents, community leaders, and other stakeholders who are interested in improving the quality of education in their communities.

Some examples of groups that advise school boards include, the National School Boards Association, Education Trust, the Council of the Great City Schools, the National PTA, and the Center for Public Education.

Whether you call in the Property Brothers, a city contractor, or make it a DIY effort, Hartford’s Board of Education needs a rebuild.  Any objective observation would lead to the same conclusion, a reimagining of the Board is required.