Keep the School Boards Local, Please
Involving the federal government in unruly school board discussions is a bad idea.
When I took my first job at a small-town newspaper, one of the duties I had was to cover the local school boards. It was a new experience, one that gave me an idea about what actually goes into setting policies at local school districts.
I can remember one statement a school board president made to students who were sitting in on a board meeting to learn more about what happened there. As he told the students, "We hire the superintendent and we set policy."
The first part of his statement refers to the fact that, in most cases, a locally-elected board determines who it wants to hire or retain to be the superintendent for the district. In some cases, board members take action on other hiring recommendations the superintendent makes, but they are usually a formality.
The second part refers to the policies a district sets, and these policies are mostly determined by state law (though federal law might apply in a few cases), while others come via input from a state school boards association. However, if a state or federal law doesn't come into play, a local school board is free to set its own policy, rather than accept what is presented by the state association.
A school board's job is supposed to be simple and, most of the time, doesn't generate a lot of interest from the public at large. In fact, I've found that of all elected offices in this country, school boards generate the least amount of interest. I suspect, in most cases, people couldn't tell you the name of the individual who represents them on the local school board.
But there are times in which school district residents show up to the meetings in large numbers. This usually happens when there's a local issue of great interest to them -- often, it's a concern about a local incident for which residents hold one or more school employees responsible (with the superintendent almost always included).
You can also run into situations such as a board member who wants to micromanage (in these cases, it's not unusual to find they dislike a particular teacher or coach) or parents who may have a personal issue with a school staff member. But what tends to generate the most interest in school board issues is something that matters to people in that district, not something that gets discussed on a national level.
That is, until recent times in which subjects such as critical race theory and COVID-19 have thrust schools into the national spotlight.
As a result, people who may never have thought about attending a school board meeting are showing up on a regular basis -- and because our political polarization is growing by the day, we find that the people who show up are often emotional, sometimes agitated and, in a few cases, flat out rude.
It's gotten to the point that the National School Boards Association penned a letter to President Biden asking him to take action -- among other things, to ask multiple federal agencies to investigate incidents, even citing the Patriot Act in dealing with "domestic terrorism."
Zaid Jilani examined the incidents the NSBA cited and determined that most of them didn't involve violence and certainly wouldn't be "terrorism." For example, mocking a student who speaks in favor of wearing masks is definitely rude, but to call it "terrorism" is ridiculous.
Furthermore, the NSBA asking the feds to get involved is one of the worst things you can do, unless you can cite strong evidence that local police officers are unable to keep people from physically attacking one another during meetings. But if somebody does engage in violence, and an officer is quick to intervene to stop it, we don't need the FBI to get involved.
What people need to recognize is that local school boards are predominantly concerned with how to address issues at the local level. Unless state or federal law is forcing a board's hand, these issues should be settled at the local level.
More importantly, to declare a group of people shouting a lot means you need to invoke various federal statutes and clamp down on school district residents is taking things too far. All that's going to do is erode trust and make school district residents angrier.
I do wonder if some school board members may get used to barely having anyone in attendance at meetings and, thus, may not be prepared to handle large crowds. However, if there's a lot of interest in a particular issue, they have to be ready to accept criticism like any other elected official.
It's one thing for a board president to bang the gavel if there's too much shouting taking place. However, the board president shouldn't play favorites or threaten to remove people, but simply remind everyone that, while there will be disagreements, that constant shouting isn't going to solve anything.
On another note, I would remind people that, while it's easy to not pay attention to something unless you have to, paying attention to your local school board is important. Not only do you get to vote on who serves on the board, but those policies impact your community, even if you don't have children attending the schools.
Asking questions is important, but it shouldn't be solely because somebody on your favorite 24-7 news network told you this. You should be asking questions that are important to your local community, which don't always have to involve a federal or state issue.
It may also be a good idea to ask whether or not your local school board member actually sends his or her children to the public schools (or if they did, but the children have since graduated) or prefers to send the kids to a private school. A board member with kids who attend or have graduated from the public schools is going to have a more vested interest in the public schools.
Most of all, school boards need to be recognized as a local entity and, in most cases, the decisions need to be left up to the local people. Getting the feds involved and making claims of "domestic terrorism" does nothing to solve issues -- in fact, it's likely to make those issues worse.