It was over a year in the making ? not planning, just making a date: ?A Special Board of Education Meeting devoted to ?board communication.?
We are probably not a lot different from many organizations: in an era of instant and?abundant communications, we don't communicate very well.??On school boards the problem is compounded by having ? if you're in a diverse district as I am ? a wildly diverse membership; folks who send and receive hundreds of emails a day and folks who proclaim, proudly, ?I don't look at emails.?? Blue collar, ?white collar, professional. Happy people. Sad people. Etc.
Try as our School Board Associations might ? seminars, webinars, brochures, conventions ? our board?is a do-it-yourself group ??Unless it isn't. (The fact that we didn't?call in a ?facilitator? to run the?meeting was an improvement; a mark, in my eyes, of the board gaining some self-confidence.) ? Communication is not our group's forte, which is why, despite a consensus that we have a meeting, we couldn't agree on when to do it.??(A parent roaring, at a previous meeting, ?the most dysfunctional board I've seen,? spurred us on.)
We seem to have trouble?agreeing on anything,?including?how to disagree amicably ? but that's another subject.
It may have been the public dispute I had with the board president in the letters column of the local paper, but finally we had our communications meeting.? We had a full agenda ? topics included ?agenda building,? ?between meetings,? ?types: e-mail, phone,? ?chain of command? ? and there was to be no public comment (the irony of which went right past everyone?until the end) so we could have an unfettered conversation; actually, its a way to send a message to the public not to come ? and only about five people did.
I knew there would be trouble with the email part of the meeting, since I was one of the few who actually used email to communicate (or tried to ? it was mostly one-way).
?I think that board members should not be allowed to email other board members unless they email the whole board,? said the board member who had, until a few weeks before, proudly announced that he never looked at emails.
That proposal was batted around for a while before?it disappeared in to the mists of confusion. ?One board member suggested we have a listserve dedicated to board business with separate emails.? Yes, no. No resolution.
?I can't hear anything,??another board member shouted about 30 minutes into the meeting.? This had been a constant complaint of mine, for over a year, ever since moving the meeting locations into the new Junior High cafeteria ? a room with 20-foot-high ceilings and the acoustics of a subway tunnel. (My suggestion to haul the architect back in and have him fix it was met with collegial silence.) We each had a microphone, but half of them never worked ? and it seemed to be a different half at each meeting. ?The superintendent said he would look into moving the meetings.
Chain of command is always much-loved board topic ? closely related to another pet peeve of Board Associations and Superintendents, micromanaging (see my Ed Next post) ? ?but the big issue this evening was board members who didn't follow the chain and made complaints ? worse, gave orders ? to staff. It was meant, as it always is, to tell board members to keep their mouths shut.? My suggestion that the staff be educated about board members ? that they have opinions and have the right to speak them but do not speak for the board ? was met with silence.? I asked if there?was a way staffers could complain about such things (yes, chain of command) and suggested that board members be alerted if they are scaring staff.? That too was taken in with silence.??
Bottom line: my colleagues ? and I am sure they are not alone ? are downright afraid of communicating, ?because, I suppose, they have a sneaking, if not always conscious, suspicion that information is power. Best way of maintaining and exercising it: ?don't communicate.? In fact, one colleague said it best at a previous meeting, responding to my request for minutes to committee meeting. ?You want to control everything,? he blurted.
This is primal republic, a stunning reminder of the Founders' wisdom in giving us a First Amendment ? not just to make sure that the free flow of information (we know what happens when we have an uninformed public)?is ?protected, but to remind those in power who owns the joint.
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
