Bigun,
My experience with school board service is that elected school boards can actually do very little toward setting academic policies of any kind. Out of the kindness of their heart (s) state and federal education agencies take care of all that for you. You do have some little control over budgets and personnel matters but little else. At least here in Texas.
Simply not true. We had a Director of Curriculum, and he led a group to select ALL TEXTS and determine course study.
While on the board, I set forth a contract for all students that the administration implemented on behavior. It spelled everything out precisely, do X, Y, or Z, you get expelled, A, B, C, you get suspended. Kids were required to sign the agreement to attend our schools.
As a school district, we determine what schools we were building, what schools we were renovating. The state rubber stamped whatever we came up with, and paid for part of the expense.
We determined what sports our kids participated in, decided what levels those sports were funded, etc.
There are 506 school districts in Pennsylvania, and they each have major autonomy from the state. The boards are considered officials of the state technically, but in function, they have huge autonomy.
We forced out a teacher we knew was a sexual predator, whose illegal act on a child was 14 years prior, 7 years beyond the statute of limitations. Legally, we could not mention to the public that we have a 4th grade predator, and you might want to question your child, for he selected a child each year to abuse, we were certain. Our solicitor said you can't do a thing. I said, we get rid of him by his resignation, or we terminate his employment and take our chances in the court.
After we reported this predator to the state, it took them 1.5 years to yank his teaching certificate. This teacher could have picked up and got a teaching job in another state and resume where he left off.
THERE SHOULD NOT BE A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS FOR THE SEXUAL ASSAULT OF A CHILD, PARTICULARLY UNDER AGE 12.And, I believe it should be considered a capital crime. With a population rushing to 400 million, I say hanging a person that sexually assaulted a child 12 and under is a reasonable outcome. Society just does not need these people.
I would say we had complete control of our budget and personnel matters. In fact, if anything, the damn teachers union carried more sway on personnel issues than the state. Every time there was a personnel issue, they fought everything tooth and nail, even when they knew the teacher to be guilty of what they were accused of.
We had high school teachers sleeping with girls in their classes, the pedophile sodomizing 10 year old boys, drug issues at the schools, and every year, a kid with a loaded gun in school. It NEVER hit the media. We always had the police immediately arrest and take the kid off.
Believe me, I thought the state's influence was rather minimal. And that in part is why some school districts operated well, like ours, and then there were school districts that operated poorly, and were reliant on the state to come along and subsidize their grossly incompetent management of the district, i.e. Clairton School District in PA.
Every state operates in their own manner. I am sure Texas does things in a different fashion.
