State School Board Meeting - A surreal Experience

Reflections on State School Board Meeting – A Surreal Experience

As I sat through the State School Board Meeting this week, August 14, 06, the word surreal kept popping into my mind.  

All the sophisticated main players, the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) executives who gave varied presentations and the State Board members all looked sane enough. They are all highly successful and are certainly the cream of the crop in talent, intelligence, ability, and prestige; but the words and ideas coming out of their mouths just didn't match what one would expect from people with these characteristics.

Ten schools were on the State Board of Education agenda appealing the  probationary status they had been given by the ADE.  Even though I came to the meeting fully aware that the State Board would follow its usual pattern and deny every one of them, I still found myself in dismay as the state board consistently turned down every appeal.

I heard one case after another where there had been a minor infraction so insignificant that any sane, reasonable person would have understood it had nothing to do with the education of the children: a report filed a few hours late because of computer problems, a background check that had been delayed twice through no fault of the teacher  who had a master's degree and a 10 year certificate, and a school that substituted a more rigorous AP calculus class  than the calculus class required by the ADE because none of the students wanted the regular calculus class.   

As the ADE executives explained how these were odious crimes because the courts require an equal education for all, some of the State Board members were nodding approvingly and voted unanimously in most cases to uphold the probationary status for these insignificant infractions that could lead to closing, consolidating, or reconstituting an entire school district and putting students on the buses for 4 hours.  But they looked and acted so rational, and they are intelligent and talented leaders in our society; and they hold such lofty positions!

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