April 18, 2023, Board Meeting — My Thoughts
We held a regular board meeting on April 18th. You can view the meeting on YouTube here. As always, I encourage you to watch the meeting if you can.
Special Education
The administration provided a presentation on the special education program, and parents and students gave powerful feedback about the importance of the services they had received and how much it meant to them. This feedback was a reminder of the vital role that public schools play in our communities. One common thread in their comments was the significant role that their teachers played in their success. That brings me to the next issue.
Administrative Appointments
It is that time of the year when the board begins to vote on administrative hires and appointments. Last week, the board appointed six acting principals as principals. These acting principals have been at their respective schools for the entire school year. I suggested that in situations like these, it would be beneficial to gather feedback from the teachers and staff at their schools to inform our decisions. I believe that the board — and the administration — would find this sort of feedback very useful.
Unfortunately, the response to my suggestion revealed that we simply don’t seek—much less consider—the input of our educators in decisions like these.
First, the superintendent claimed that this sort of feedback is embedded in the process when they are making these decisions. That is simply not true. I worked for this district and I can tell you that teachers and staff do not have an opportunity to provide feedback—positive or negative—about the principals in their schools. In fact, I worked in a middle school that cycled through 4 principals in as many years. The administration would have learned so much from the folks in that school during these hiring processes, but it never asked.
Another commissioner shifted the discussion away from educator input and instead brought up the board’s “Chat with the Chair” meetings with students. While these meetings are valuable, they cannot substitute for structured feedback from our educators. This also begs the question—if we are sitting down with students, why are we not sitting down with our educators? We would learn so much.
Later in the meeting, a commissioner mentioned the teacher shortage and noted that it had been brewing for years. This is entirely true and, I believe, should compel us to reflect on our responsibility for this shortage. Often, we are all too eager to point the finger at external factors for making our educators’ lives so hard. We need to acknowledge our own role in getting to this point. For years we have not given our educators the voice they deserve—and from which we would benefit. I think we missed an opportunity to do just that last week.