Public school governance in Pennsylvania often is a train wreck because even though things aren’t what they used to be, state law covering school boards have not evolved to reflect that. School governance, from the calendar through the organizational chart, largely reflects a bygone era.
Poor school governance, as in Scranton and some other local districts and others across the state, proves that taking nine people off the street and putting them in charge of complex enterprises that spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year is not a sound management model.
To be sure, serving as a conscientious school director is the definition of a thankless task. It’s a volunteer position that entails enormous responsibility and a great deal of work. People who enter the positions with the best of intentions often are overwhelmed while dealing with political pressures, stressed taxpayers, emotionally invested parents and an array of social dysfunction that shows up in schools.
Lawmakers tend to proposed incremental reforms. Republican state Rep. Valerie Gaydos of Allegheny County, for example, has proposed a bill that would diminish the perpetual problem of nepotism by precluding close family members of district employees from serving on school boards.
That would preclude conflicts of interest regarding hiring and promotion, and would ensure that board members serve the community rather than their own economic interests.
But as damaging as it is, nepotism is just one aspect of how school governance goes awry. Earlier this year, Democratic Rep. Joe Webster of Montgomery County raised three ideas that would produce more robust reform.
One would eliminate the prohibition on compensation for school directors, which might help produce more qualified candidates for more seats. It would allow voters in districts to decide whether directors could be compensated comparably to municipal government officials.
More important, another proposal would increase training for directors. And it would provide tuition at Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education universities for courses relevant to public administration and school governance.
Ultimately, the state government should examine an entire new school governance structure including smaller, paid, well-educated school boards far better equipped to handle modern school governance.
— The Citizens’ Voice,
Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (TNS)
