To elect or appoint the school board in Baltimore County, Md.? That is the question state lawmakers will ask soon, as a bill that would settle on a compromise appears headed to the floor in Annapolis, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Delgates and senators from Baltimore County voted unanimously Thursday to support House Bill 0384, spearheaded by Delegate Steve Lafferty, which would create a “hybrid” school board with one student, seven elected, and four appointed members. The Baltimore County delegation also attached an amendment, suggested by Delegate Adrienne Jones, to have a nominating commission of engaged stakeholders for vacancies and appointees.
With bills that affect only one county, the full House of Delegates and Senate usually follow the vote of the county’s delegation, as was shown last year in the takeover of county schools by the county executive in Prince George’s County.
This feature of Maryland politics was also made clear last month when senators from Anne Arundel County voted 3-2 not to support Senate Bill 0148, which would create a hybrid board in that county. Pessimistic after that vote, delegates in the other chamber dropped the push for their own bill on the matter.
The drive for elected representation on school boards
The move away from an all-appointed board, sought for almost a decade by parent groups such as Advocates for Baltimore County Schools, would go into effect in 2018 if it clears the House Ways and Means Committee, the full house, and the senate, and then gets Gov Martin O’Malley’s signature.
Key opposition to the change came from County Executive Ken Kamenetz, but WYPR reported that, while he’s still opposed to a hybrid board, he agrees that people on both sides of the issue are “well-meaning.” Mr Kamenetz has some power in appointing people to the school board, as he recommends names to the governor, who has the final say.
At the present time, Baltimore County Public Schools has one of only four school boards in the state without any direct voter input. That number is out of 24 school boards. Anne Arundel County, Wicomico County, and Baltimore City are the other three all-appointed boards.
Mr Kamenetz has suggested that elected school boards are prone to political infighting. However, among all the elected school boards in the country, many more do not experience infighting issues than do. Evidence refutes Mr Kamenetz’s argument a little and supports elected school boards. We send our best wishes to advocates to keep up the good fight.
Should we have school boards at all?
Some proponents of the privatization of public schools have said school boards in general, but especially school boards that are accountable to the public through elections, are one of the biggest barriers to the privatization movement.
For example, Reed Hasting—yes, the billionaire CEO of Netflix, who sits on the board for several charter school companies that he wants to turn into national chains, as if schools were McDonald’s or something—presented a sort of charter school roadmap at the March 4 conference of the California Charter School Association in San Jose. His speech was very well received.
The executive would like to replace every school board in the country with large nonprofits run by rich people. School boards, he said, which change frequently because of elections, do not allow long-term planning for school operations.
While I oppose the charter school movement as one of the hallmarks of the privatization of public schools, Mr Hastings’s point is well taken. Long-term projects have trouble getting off the ground in schools, as evidenced by the length of time the No Child Left Behind law has been in effect despite very strong opposition from almost everybody in the schools.
This isn’t necessarily bad—because it has the side effect of slowing down changes that could be harmful—but it’s certainly one of the reasons schools are usually the last institutions to improve technology, get rid of useless and harmful laws, or make other changes that would be good for their long-term effectiveness.
The problem with an appointed board or even a nonprofit as Mr Hastings suggested, of course, is that the board, committee, team, or whatever, would serve only the goals of the person making the appointments, which are not necessarily the same goals as “the people.”
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” Thomas Jefferson wrote. “[A]nd if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power.”