In light of Republican state Sen. Todd Gardenhire’s proposal to double the salaries of school board members, it seemed useful to review just what the job of our school board is.
Unsurprisingly, since it’s a “board,” the job is similar to that of most nonprofit boards. Specifically, according to the Hamilton County Board of Education website, the board is responsible to:
– Adopt goals and set priorities
– Adopt policies
– Hire and evaluate the superintendent
– Adopt a budget
– Communicate with the community
Given this description of its job, let’s look at some board actions in recent meetings:
– Approval of open enrollment for the Hixson Middle School strings program
– Approval of overnight field trips for five different schools
– Approval of a variety of bids/ contracts, including one to furnish doors and door hardware
– Approval to relocate a bus depot to some vacant property
– Approval of a pump station easement
I’m not making this up.
So where, precisely, does approving overnight high school field trips fit with the board’s duties? Maybe it fits under adopting policies. Probably not, though, since a policy would provide guidance at a bit higher level. Well, what about relocating a bus depot? Shouldn’t our elected officials be discussing and voting on where to put some buses since none of the almost 5,000 full-time employees of the HCDE are capable of making a determination on something like that without in-depth review and approval from the board?
When you boil it down, the school board has two main responsibilities: selecting and evaluating the superintendent, and adopting the budget – two significant and important jobs. So how did we get to the place we’re at now, with a board which spends its time considering and voting on open enrollment for the Hixson Middle School strings program, not that it isn’t important to a group of middle-school children who want to learn to play the violin before it’s too late.
Why is it that our school board involves itself in matters that should be handled by the people we hire to do this work? Apparently, they simply don’t trust the superintendent and the other 4,999 employees of the HCDE to do their jobs. Or maybe approval of the budget and evaluation of the superintendent just aren’t enough to warrant the time our school board spends or the effort members exert to get elected. They think to themselves, “Surely we’ve been hired to do more than this. We need to justify all of these meetings, so why not spend some time approving the purchase of doorknobs?”
Given the facts above, what is the justification for doubling the salaries of the school board? It appears that most of the time that’s spent is, in fact, misspent. If you had a group of employees who exhausted themselves interfering with the work of the rest of your staff, would you reward them with a raise?
Rather than a raise, it would make more sense to use some money to provide the school board training on what the duties of a board are. I’m not sure what’s so complicated about “hire a superintendent, evaluate that person and approve a budget,” but the school board hasn’t figured it out, so maybe professional help is in order.
Nick Decosimo is a senior adviser with a transaction advisory firm in Chattanooga. Contact him at ndecosimo@gmail.com.