There is absolutely no excuse for the Hamilton County Board of Education to ignore parents of children in our schools.
But that is exactly what the board is doing. Using “policy,” the board has devised a way to write parents and parental input right out of its decision making. Educators, it seems, are happy to assign blame to parents when students score poorly on tests and when schools chalk up discipline problems. But when it’s time to make school policy, they lock parents out.
Finally, a local group is speaking up and calling for change — the same change that other elected officials and other school advocacy groups should have been insisting on for years.
Currently, if the moms and dads at any school in the county want to be heard about some issue coming up at a school board meeting, they must ask officials’ permission to speak 72 hours — three days — in advance.
The trouble is — parents don’t know what’s on the school board agenda until it is posted usually a day or two before the meeting, so it’s impossible to meet that three-day deadline until the next week — often until after the matter has already been voted on and decided by the board members. And remember, school board members only meet once a month.
Convenient, huh?
Based on comments from school board members at a recent retreat and again last week to Times Free Press reporter Tim Omarzu for a Monday story about UnifiEd’s call for school board accessibility and transparency, the timing is a calculated decision aimed at counting parents, and sometimes teachers, right out of the decision-making process.
“The things we’re being told [by the public at meetings] are things we already know,” board member Joe Galloway told our reporter, adding that board members already know what constituents think from emails and phone calls.
Superintendent Rick Smith agreed: “Our board members are engaged with the public,” Smith said.
That must be why several incumbent board members didn’t bother to return newspaper editorial writers’ first or second phone calls made to the school board members’ office numbers (the numbers they put on their candidacy forms) back around election time when we were trying to schedule meetings for endorsements. If we couldn’t get board members’ attention for that, how likely are parents to get some ear time?
Board member David Testerman summed up the real reason for the parent/public snub: Time and temperament. Public comments can get out of hand, he told Omarzu. He’d seen it happen. “It was out of control. And when it was out of control, believe me, it was out of control.”
If public input is a problem, then school board members need to rethink their commitment to serve in public office.
“I think it’s a no-brainer for public engagement,” UnifiEd’s Executive Director Elizabeth Crews said. “If you want to have a conversation with the public, the public needs to have all the information.”
UnifiEd, a bi-partisan movement of parents, teachers, students and citizens in support of Hamilton County public schools, also wants the board to make other changes aimed at improving communication and transparency.
The group is asking the board to provide an agenda and supporting materials to the public online no less than seven days before school board meetings. UnifiEd also wants the district budget posted online in an easy-to-read format so the public can understand how their tax dollars are being spent. Currently the budget is not online in any format.
The group also wants the board to move some school board meetings into the community, rather than have all of the meetings at the Hamilton County Department of Education on Bonny Oaks Drive — an hour’s round-trip by car from many local communities. There is no bus service available to the board building or meetings.
Public schools are the public’s business and, whether school board members like it or not, they should be responsive. At this point, it is the board’s statements and actions — all amounting to inaction — that seem “out of control.”
Educators are always quick to throw the blame for poor school scores and high discipline problems onto the shoulders of “parental involvement,” yet, here, they don’t really want to talk to parents or to allow parents into the education decision-making inner sanctum.
As former school board member and UnifiEd board director Linda Mosley notes: “Unless the school system is willing to open its books and its meetings, it won’t be possible to get the kind of [public] support that we need to make our schools the best.”
Open the doors, folks. Let the parents in.