School Board Talk-4 Better Dialog Sessions with the Community

For several days, I've been writing posts about how school boards listen to the community at school board meetings.   I've been suggesting that to a great extent, many school boards aren't using community input time to the best advantage.   I'm sure that  there are colleagues on my own board and others will disagree.   But the thrust of my argument is that mostly school boards devote precious time to random community input where the comments focus on topics selected randomly by who shows up, and from persons whose comment are not necessarily representative of the people who know the most about the presentation topic. 

Operational Comments Belong Elsewhere.  Supposing someone shows up, randomly, to express a concern about early childhood education.  Maybe the person has a complaint about the management of a particular facility in the district, or about the transportation provided to children.   That's all well and good, but I maintain that this person might well have been more effective if she showed up to discuss this with the administrator most closely responsible for the operational problem she is complaining about. Who could we invite who could challenge the board and district leadership to raise its standards in early childhood education? What would a dialog with the board look like if the board provided a robust forum on the topic of truly outstanding early childhood educatoni?

School Boards Function at an Accountability Level.  I maintain, School Boards responsibility for early childhood education should be at a much higher level than would be stimulated by an average citizen showing up at a board meeting.  By way of example, many school districts self evaluate their early childhood education programs using the TS Gold instrument and often the self evaluation reports, falsely, that the district's program is turning out graduates at amazingly high levels.   You know, everybody is above average kind of material.  

The TS Gold instrument, it turns out, is not what its cracked up to be, or so I assert.   But most school boards, upon being told that the TS Gold says that their programs are performing at a very high level, just nod their heads and give a few speeches of congratulation.  Its going to take highly experienced outside people to challenge us to think more deeply.  In fact, its pretty much standard to see early childhood education as such a good thing, that anyone who asks hard questions about whether its doing a good job is likely to be ostracized. 

Seldom do we board members dive in and engage in deep probing questions:  What does the TS Gold actually test for?   If our students are doing so well, according to the TS Gold when they leave pre school, why are they performing way below proficient in second grade?  I guarantee you, that no  random public commenter is going to step forward and add that kind of value.

Public Hearings for Community Experts.   Suppose instead of taking random community comment from persons on topics for which they have no particular qualification, school boards periodically scheduled targeted panel workshop discussions from community advocates and experts.  I don't mean the local community organizer, whith apologies to community organizers.   I mean people with professional active vocations who have something to offer in this area:  (e.g. the state of early childhood education), who can challenge the board with real facts, real policy issues, and who aren't internal people merely presenting a defense of how great they are.

Many years ago, our board held such a forum at a workshop.   We placed a selected group of people working in the early childhood field,  each with genuine expertise and information on the state of early childhood education in our community.  I still remember that session as one of the best school board meetings  that we ever had.   My one regret is that I could not convince fellow board members to schedule more of these sessions. 

Connecting Forums to the Board's Mission
If you are on a  board of education, or have influence on a board of education, I urge you to think more deeply about the fundamental purpose of school boards, and how presentations at school boards might elevate, educate, stimulate and transform, instead of deliver random complaints.We should be inviting people who have given their topic a lot of thought; who can add value and make positive suggestions.  For example,

• If the district is struggling with how to transform elementary education in ways that close the achievement gap, maybe it would be productive to invite a panel of successful charter school leaders and ask them to discuss what is working with their students. 
• If the district is interested in how it is meeting the needs of talented students from all backgrounds, maybe it would be productive to invite a panel of students to describe their experience in district schools. 
• If the district is planning a major revision in the reading curriculum, might it be helpful to invite outside reading experts to discuss the issues the district is confronting and the major issues that school districts are confronting and some frank dialog from community experts on possible solutions.  

As a school board member, I would express my emphatic belief that hearing from community experts in these or other areas, in an open atmosphere of frank dialog, would be far more meaningful that most of the community input, and indeed much of the district staff only presentations that sometimes appear on our agendas. Several years ago, our board invited Joe Nathan and Samuel Yigzaw to present on some of their work in charter schools serving immigrant students and others.  They challenged us to raise our vision of what our students can accomplish, and it certainly had a long term impact on the way that I thought about our possibilities.