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The topic on this week's Behind the classroom door from northern Illinois University's College of Education is the role of the school board member. Here's the moderator Dean Robert after top it seems to me that the school board member and most community. Is truly one of the unobtrusive public servants who goes about his work quietly and without much public appreciation and recognition. And yet his work is extremely responsible. A lot of dollars are involved in the decisions that he makes. And the welfare of children. And of course the welfare or children has much to do with the welfare of the entire community. I think the school board is extremely important. And in fact a good school board can eventually cause a school system to make significant improvements while poorer school board may cause the school
to maintain a status quo and in some cases perhaps even two. Cause an inferior program to be developed within a school and how often we judge the entire community by the appearance of the buildings by the nature of the school system. I think the school board. Is a powerful have to play a powerful political role I think in the community and actually it has clear domain to prevail and in its desires to the extent that they don't violate the laws of a higher authority. Because of the amount of time which a school board member must devote to school duties it certainly takes a devoted community citizen to take on such responsibilities. I think more of this type of person should be encouraged to become a school board member. The regulations for becoming a school board member. Quite simple. This person must be a citizen of
the United States. He must be 21 years of age and a resident of the state of the district in which he lives for. One year. I think sometimes that school boards perhaps are criticised a great deal because a school board may tend to execute policies or try to carry out policies. And I do think it is important for a school board to realize that its function and policy me again and that the staff under the leadership of the new school superintendent will carry out those policies that are formulated and developed by the local school board course here again. We take some upstanding citizens who have been successful in their own work. We run them for school board membership. And all of the sudden they're supposed to be experts. How are they to know that the school board has influence and power and can
operate only as a group only as a group. And let the school board member individually has no responsibility. My right shouldn't even express an opinion separately unless by chance she has been designated to do so by the school board. I think it's the superintendent's responsibility to educate the board members concerning their responsibilities are I do think it is quite natural for a new school board member to feel that he should be response to the people who elected him so that it's quite easy for him on the street or some social gathering to make a promise to a parent who complains about some aspect of the school program. And yet his word as an individual is meaningless because as you mentioned the only way that a school board
can act officially is as a total group in an announced meeting rather than a sub rosa meeting of the school board. I think many times parents in the community expect a school board member to be an authority on the school day after he's been on the board for about one week. I think some times we're guilty of for example calling upon newly elected school board members to come to PTA meetings and talk about the schools when actually many of the most the PTA members may know more about the school but what the school board had been doing and this newly elected person. Well that's right I think a school board member's responsibility is to essentially educate himself. There are all kinds of good magazines and materials that are put out to find any books I might add defining the role of the school board member. And serious mistakes can be avoided. And of course the person
who is willing to serve without pay and perhaps with considerable personal sacrifice in fact I've known school board members who said they lost business. Because the school board was involved in something that was displeasing the public but they felt was necessary for the welfare of the schools that their own personal business suffered as a result of their involvement. But I do think they must be educated in the superintendent has to take an active role in this even though most superintendents again dislike the idea of appearing to tell the school board member what he should do. But I think the experience school board members of those who have had continuing service can educate the others and take the necessary steps to see to it that the school board is legislative and that it plans and does things in a way that are systematic. And modern business methods rather than just doing things piecemeal and carelessly. I think some superintendents maintain a library within the
school board room for school board members including. The school board Journal and other journals professional journals that contain Artie goes on. That relate to educational problems and effective ways of handling these problems. In service training for the school board members is also available. Beyond the local school district for example they have in some cases they have county institutes they have tri county institutes. They have maybe division conventions or conferences for school board members and just a week ago I attended the state state meeting in Chicago for all school board members in Illinois where for I think 3 days they had Sunday Monday I believe in Tuesday. They had all kinds of meetings in service type training for school board members.
I think Lloyd that those meetings are considered to be outstanding and they're put on by the on II School Boards Association and the Illinois Association of School Administrators. It was a combined meeting. They're very well-attended and I think any school board member could profit from attending those annual meetings. These meetings which school board members are or should it tend to take a considerable amount of time and at the present time in many cities perhaps the larger cities and more than others it's getting extremely difficult to attract desirable citizens to positions on the school board. They aren't interested and when we consider some of the reasons I think one of the big reasons might be the controversies in which schools are now involved at the present time. But I think an even greater reason might be the the amount of time which the school board member must put he and you in. Carrying out his
obligations on the board. Well after all it is Leo kind of a thankless job isn't it. I talk to school board members who were discouraged because of a school board election perhaps 60 votes would be cast and that would be a sufficient number of votes get them elected and a community of five or ten thousand. And this was discouraging to them because they thought the people were not at all interested in the wrong of the school board member and what he contributed. And then this one man in particular said well after one of these elections if a citizen would come up to me and say why don't you do something about this. I would say did you vote. For that at the school board election. And then I would say to you suppose you have a right now to ask me to do something or to look into something well I'm sure he would look into it. But it is a thankless task. No money involved very little credit. Well there's more interest in the schools now. I think that we're getting better people to be involved in the work of the school
board member and the contribution they're making is absolutely vital because it does take so much time and it seems as though that would be a limiting factor and who can become a school board member. It seems as though it must be someone say like a housewife who was plenty of help at home so she can get away. Or a man who is wealthy or semi retired. A person who can leave his business for a while and attend the school board meetings. I suppose you are raising the question of whether a school board member should be paid in large cities. It is customary to pay a school board for the time that he spends in sessions. And also to pay his expenses for attendance at any meeting. Some communities even pay a monthly stipend to school board members. I wonder for trying
to. Get a cross representation of the community on the board. If some type of pay may not be desirable. Well that's one way of looking at it re paying school board members I think another solution to this problem might be this. Let the school board delegate more of these responsibilities to the superintendent of schools and his staff. Let the professional educators run the school. And let the school board have fewer meter meetings and let it be mainly a policy making body. Well I think that's essentially the way most school boards operate Leo but even so there is a lot of business to attend particularly now in these controversial times and with the costs of education going up and new buildings have to having to be built. School board members have to be involved in some of these things even though it would be called policy matters and no
one no school board member school boards to meet once a week wait until midnight and put in long hours on critical problems where the superintendent just had to have their thinking and their advice and had to establish policies that would serve the schools. I think that. But what you're saying Leo would become almost impossible in fact would negate the value of a school board whether it's if a school board turned over completely to the superintendent. The responsibility for determining policy in running a school. Then we would not have local control of the schools. I think that it is legally the responsibility of the school board to determine the educational policies for that community and this is time consuming.
Well they're enormously critical decisions for example shall we survey the growth of our community to see how many new schools are needed. Should we acquire land for those schools so that we don't have to buy the land after it has appreciated in value to the point where it is very expensive. What kinds of schools shall we build and one should we Schedule E schools and how shall we secure the money to finance the schools. There are certainly some duties that should be turned over to the administration I mean administrative staff. Unfortunately I think it's still a policy in many communities for the school board to interview every job applicant for a teaching position. Certainly the selection of professional personnel should be the responsibility of the school administration and the faculty. I think the compromise that often is reached is that the administration and staff will select
people for positions and the positions will be approved or those persons will be approved by the school board. But I still see in the paper gateway where a local school board is running an ad that they are looking for are teacher of English and second grade teacher for example and the school board conducts the interviews for those positions. I think when we look at the major activities engaged in by most school boards we see other things such as the o the establishing of local attendance boundaries which can be a controversial issue in some communities. Such things as authorizing elections and referendums bussing of children and O. For example re it mentions liking teachers of course but with a one person let's say the school board members
are in my opinion responsible for its selecting the superintendent and other words out. That's about the only person that I can think of. That they really need to select themselves in addition to selecting the superintendent. They also have the responsibility of deciding which tasks which duties they are going to delegate to this will print on it. Well seems to me what we're saying really only excuse my interrupting you come right back is that the duties of the superintendent vs. the responsibility of the board. Are pretty well defined. That nationally over the many years of this operation and this is one of the truly democratic operations in our nation I believe. Legislative responsibilities and big decisions affecting large expenditures of money. Are of the school board's
responsibility. But they need to know this is no question about it and the superintendent of this is a chief administrator and he better administer the schools well are on the school board has he been to replacing him. Well one of the new superintendent enters a community he realizes that the state statutes delegate the the functions of running the schools to the school board. But he also realizes that each community is different. Each school board delegates different amounts of responsibility to the superintendent. So that's one of his first tasks is to become familiar with just what his responsibilities will be. Because I think the. Administrator The school superintendent serves as executive officer of the school board. Certainly he should attend all of the school board meetings and I think it is one of his duties to educate members of the board. The board may not realize that
they are often unsure groans and. It's up to the school superintendent to make certain that in educational matters the school board receives the best advice available in terms of what you said earlier Lloyd about the school board selecting a superintendent. It is the school board's responsibility to select a super dunnit. But I notice that in many more progressive communities. The school board uses an advisory committee usually made up of university personnel to screen candidates for the superintendency and then to make recommendations from the applicants to the school board for the school board's final approval. Yes this is a common practice returning Leone to your comment which is so true that a new superintendent in a sense inherits a school
board. And the school board might or might not understand its role perfectly. A case comes to mind. Not too distant from here where the school board secretary actually occupied an office in the administrative building next to the superintendent and every requisition that was made out for supplies had to be countersigned and approved by the school board secretary. Well this was just one illustration of how deeply involved that particular school board became in the administration of the schools and the superintendent talked as much as he would Ray couldn't do anything about it because they just viewed this as is his position that what he would like to have take place. Well the upshot of this was outside agencies had to step in on the North Central Association for credit to colleges and high schools secondary schools had to step in and threaten to remove their credit
Titian. And at the state level they had to threaten to remove state support before they could get that school board secretary out of the building where he was involving himself and all these administrative matters. I think tradition probably plays its role here and the work and responsibilities of school board members or at least in the activities in which the engaged because if you go back just 25 years in Illinois or in the surrounding states when we had lots of one room rural schools and we had local school boards. They had a little different role to play and perhaps at some of the people who. Are now involved in school board business. I remember those days and the rolls to school boards were playing at that time. Yeah so I notice that the American Association of School Administrators has recommended that every school board should have written policies and I think Lloyd it's partially to move
away from the traditional ways of handling school policies within small communities but once the policies are written the it should be quite easy to separate what is policymaking from what is an executive function or carrying out the policy. In many schools the policies do not seem to be written as a result the school board may respond to pressure one thousand fifty six American Association of School Board so she asian yearbook for example indicates that. The school policy should require that no action would be taken by the school board. On a new policy until that a policy had been submitted in writing to the board. At least a month prior to the regular meeting now the reserve be
placed on the agenda at one monthly meeting of the board but no action will be taken on that policy for another month. I think that type of policy would be very good because in a month's time much of the heat. Some local problem would probably have been dissipated and certainly the school board would be able to respond in a more objective manner than trying to respond during the meeting in which some irate parent or irate member of the community is present. And we've been talking about the policies of school boards and about the powers of school boards. And I think I'd like to mention some of the restrictions that school boards have. For example we had school boards are restricted by state law. They're restricted by the state constitution. By Court cases that have taken place in the past by opinions of the state attorney general and by
opinions of the legal advisor for state office of public instruction. So they really do have quite a few restrictions placed on them. You know the one of the RTM and school administration has said that the. Most truly representative. Organization Public group representative of Democratic Action is a school board because a school board is close to the community. They are members of the community and they live in the community and they work with the school administrators to carry on this big task. And I think that we need to recognize that when we go to a school board for advice sound advice and any superintendent. Who thought that he could run the schools alone and make decisions just on the basis of his own experience would make some terrible mistakes. And so it goes to
these solid citizens of the community people who are giving their lives and who have usually have a background and interest in the community and in the schools. For advice and for some expert ness in how to make these big basic decisions. I think the point you're making now. Extremely important. Naturally the professional members of a school will try to interpret the schools to the community. However members of the community also expect well-informed lay members of the community to give their interpretations what the school is doing. Some school boards for that reason have developed a. Planned public relations programs that are continuous stressing the idea that these programs are continuous because in some schools the only time that you're aware of a
public relations program is immediately before a referendum or a bond issue. And actually this may alienate many parents and a community many taxpayers rather than to sell them on what the schools are doing. But good. A public relations program developed by the school board interpreted by the school board I think can go a long way and getting the members of the community to support their local schools. I think that's especially important when you realize that the unwritten expectations of the people in the community probably are as powerful as any state laws in most communities. You know so in fact in many cases an act will not be illegal until some court rules that it is illegal. So although what you mention Lloyd in terms of restrictions on the board would apply. The board has great powers because until someone would
take a matter to court the board is acting legally as long as they're acting during and organized and announced meeting of the local school board. I think you're saying then that the school board members must be cognizant of the. Let's say the political will of their friends neighbors and community members that they're going to be successful in that particular community. And by the way the tasks of the school board. Are becoming much much more complex. Not only because people are more vitally interested in their schools but because of new developments for example a collective bargaining movement on the part of teachers teachers strikes and and student strikes and problems of this type face school boards and they have to work up policies in advance of these emergency situations. For example now we're discovering that teachers in some of the larger communities at
least teachers unions are approaching the school board directly about problems of salary and teaching conditions and circumventing the superintendent. I don't know what the role of the school board should be in this regard. Again I think that many school boards realize that they are not competent to deal with the collective negotiations and therefore are bringing in outside negotiators who will serve as kind of a middleman between the teachers and the school board. Some communities use the superintendent on the spot but it becomes a very difficult role for the superintendent to play because the superintendent after all is the executive officer of the school board. But he's also the educational leader of the staff and I think this becomes a very a very crucial matter in terms of the way the superintendent would
react. Well being a school board member must be exciting. And if one can realize the impact of his work as a school board member I'm sure there would be tremendous satisfactions involved. I would like to see a wider range of individual seat school board positions and I would like to see the school board members perhaps reimbursed or at least recognize more. There are many kinds of public relations procedures we can follow that will acquaint the public more with the role of the school board member and their enormous responsibilities and will give them the kind of recognition that they deserve. So we conclude by noting that the school board is if I don't do the welfare of the school to the children and of course to the community as a whole. Behind the classroom door produced by WFIU and cooperation with the College of Education at Northern Illinois University each
week focuses its attention on one of the many challenging aspects of public school education. The program is moderated by Dr. Robert F. top dean of the College of Education at Northern Illinois University. Today's guest were Dr. Raymond B Fox associate dean of the College of Education at Northern. Dr. Leo Loughlin head of the Department of Administration and services and Dr. Lloyd Leonard head of the department of elementary education. Next week's topic will be the ideal teacher for today's schools. This program is distributed by the national educational radio network.
Series
Behind the Classroom Door
Episode Number
36
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
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cpb-aacip/500-9p2w7n79
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Series Description
Behind the Classroom Door is a radio series from WNIU-FM about education in the United States. In each episode, faculty from the Northern Illinois University College of Education address specific issues related to public school education and operation. The program is produced in cooperation with Northern Illinois University and distributed by the National Educational Radio Network.
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Education
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Sound
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00:29:07
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University of Maryland
Identifier: 69-5-36 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:10
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Citations
Chicago: “Behind the Classroom Door; 36,” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-9p2w7n79.
MLA: “Behind the Classroom Door; 36.” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-9p2w7n79>.
APA: Behind the Classroom Door; 36. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-9p2w7n79