The Power of the Board of Education

The Power of The Board of Education

             Before the Hartford Schools Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez is able to influence her minions on the Hartford Board of Education to formulate, amend, and adopt new changes to the Bylaws of the Board, aligning them more to her favor, the Board ought to exercise the power they currently have.

             The Bylaws of the Board state that the Board is an agent of the State and derives its power and exists under the Constitution and laws of the State.  One such power is spelled out in Section 9322.1 of the Bylaws:

“The Board may also decide to call for external reviews of systems integrity and performance (e.g., from audit firms, task forces comprised of local experts or community members, etc.).”

The “systems” referred to here are Finance, Human Resources, and Operations (food service, transportation, safety and security, and facility maintenance).  As to finance, the Board must ask the “who, what, and why” of contracts that appear before them.  Is this a wise, fair, and goal aligning investment?  To assess the impacts of the “who, what, and why,” the Board is free to hire outside experts to educate them.  This is instead of relying on well designed, but quite often misleading and data deficient, PDFs produced by the Superintendent’s team, or filled with data from the contracted party they are attempting to assess.  In this way, they will not enter a contract renewal voting session and base their vote on the phrase, “we’ve been partnering with these people for a long time.”  That’s a hell of an assessment of performance and integrity.

Another power of the Board is found in Section 9400 of the Bylaws.  To review and evaluate policies which it has allowed to direct the life of the student, the Board,

“shall rely on the school staff, students, and the community to provide evidence of the effect of the policies which it has adopted.”

“School staff” in the above includes teachers, and the “evidence” to be provided is not only that provided by the Superintendent, but the meaty stuff from those being directed and affected by the policy.  The power to reach out to these stakeholders is codified in the Bylaws.  The fact that a policy exists and is favored by school leadership, is not evidence of its effectiveness. To gather this evidence, the Board ought to hold their own meetings with groups of teachers, students, and community folks.  Meetings where actual “dialog” is present, where folks are free from school leadership influence.  The Board is directed to engage the public, appearing at an NRZ meeting without announcement or introduction is not an invitation to engage.

“If schools and districts are to emerge in educating students for tomorrow, it is unlikely that this will be accomplished through the individual knowledge of the decision-makers alone.”  - Philip D. Lanoue & Sally J. Zepeda, “The Emerging Work of Today’s Superintendent”

            Section 9322.1 of the Bylaws is in contrast to the spirit of the above quote, and evidence of the Superintendent’s reach and influence over an oversight board:

“The Board will fulfill its management oversight responsibilities by:  Reviewing the performance of all major management systems listed above at least annually, using metrics proposed by the Superintendent…and approved by the Board;”