Monadnock’s school board needs to change its priorities
December 08, 2008Keene Sentinel
At the Monadnock Regional School Board meeting on December 2, nearly two hours went by before the following topics came up: math, reading and science. The occasion was a report about student test results in the 2,000-student district.
Most school boards handle a lot of things that don’t directly involve curriculum and academic achievement — the condition of school buildings, strategies for teacher retention and allowances for extracurricular activity, among other matters.
But for close to four hours in the high school library last week, the members of the Monadnock board spent little time discussing the merits of any of such subjects. In a performance possibly acceptable in a new school district that’s just learning the ropes, the board of Monadnock (founded in 1961) went back and forth about how votes ought to be weighted in the multi-town district, how budgets ought to be organized on paper, how meeting minutes should be distributed, whether and how voters should be summoned to the polls to act on school issues, whether there’s a policy for school board members applying for paid school jobs and how people should behave at public meetings.
The session, which was conducted without a single break, was remarkable for how little it involved the actual substance of academics and school governance.
To be sure, some constructive things occurred. Shaken by an apparently insulting performance by a participant at a prior meeting, the chairman of the board, Eugene M. White 3rd, laid down new rules of order and promised to keep things in line.
Earlier in the evening, Kristen Goodenough of Swanzey, who recently quit in frustration eight months into a three-year school board term, complained of some board members snickering among themselves as others spoke. “Act more professional,” she insisted.
Other members of the public urged the board to observe its own schools’ anti-bullying policies. Late into the meeting there were signs that that expectation might be too high.
For the sake of its young people, Monadnock’s school board needs to change its ways.
At a minimum that means getting process off the table so substance can be debated in responsible and productive ways. That may require clarifying board policies and procedures — a step that’s under way in a limited fashion. It will require a tone of cooperation instead of confrontation. Ideally, it might also entail putting board members in a goldfish bowl by televising their meetings — an admittedly limited prospect given the disjointed geography of the seven-town district.
Finally, the board needs to get its priorities straight. At the December 2 meeting, the members spent far less time examining the ramifications on high school renovations of nixing a warrant article for a new middle school than they did debating a $620 per week cleaning contract for mops, floor mats and custodian uniforms for the district’s nine schools.
Under ordinary circumstances, school oversight is complicated stuff. Not everybody values education the same way, and schools are often bound by requirements drafted by policymakers far away from local classrooms. The situation is particularly nettlesome in multi-town districts such as Monadnock, where a cockeyed school funding system can pit communities against each other, where cross-border jealousies can go way back, and where, if given a chance, suspicions of skullduggery and pocket-lining can become destructive distractions.
So, Monadnock’s school board faces particular hurdles in serving the district’s current and future adults. First among its ambitions should be to create and sustain an environment where respect, tolerance, imagination and the purposes of education are valued as much as fiscal discipline. Based on the recent record at Monadnock, such an environment is the exception, not the norm. Either the board acknowledges that it must change the situation, or it runs the risk of letting its dysfunction leach out of the boardroom and into the classroom, where learning is supposed to take place.