Prepared Text for Board Meeting –
Marc A. Schare
Tonight, I have but one
comment.
Two weeks ago, as I’ve
done many board meeting in the last two years, I gave
a short update on my perceptions of educational issues facing our district.
Because one of those issues touched on legislation, one of my colleagues chose
to complain and the complaint led to a rearrangement of the agenda for board
meetings moving forward.
In a nutshell, I was told
by our board President that it was the will of the board that such updates are
no longer appropriate in the agenda spot reserved for board committee reports
and announcements and that
such updates should be provided at the very end of the meeting. I
object to this
for 3 reasons:
1) This board offers
members of the public the right to speak for up to 5 minutes on any subject
towards the beginning of the meeting. This right is now denied to the board
itself unless the subject fits the arbitrary definition of a “Board Committee
Report” or “Announcement”. In other words, it is fine to remind everyone about Pancake
Day but a discussion of the time magazine article on Merit Pay in public
education or the merits of the international baccalaureate program must wait
until the very end of the meeting. I object to the trivialization of the agenda
sequence.
2) The original complaint
that led to this action was that I spoke about legislation despite no longer
being the legislative liaison to OSBA. The discussion of the State of the State
address had nothing to do with the role of the OSBA legislative liaison and
was, in fact, nothing different than I’ve been doing for two years,
however my colleague chose to turn this into a good old fashioned turf
war. I object to turf wars on the
grounds that they are generally unproductive, so I’m not going to play, but for
someone to make the claim that I should cease all political activism with
regard to the Worthington School District because it is someone else’s turn to
be the legislative liaison to OSBA is as silly as for me to demand that no one
other than the finance committee speak about the budget.
3) Finally, it is my
opinion that the high honor of serving on this board of education not only
carries the right to address the issues of the day, but the responsibility as
well. I understand that many or most board members across the state do not
share that opinion, and that’s fine, but I take it seriously and will continue
to do so.