Interesting memo to Denver principals Thursday from Superintendent Tom Boasberg. This apparently is an effort to create clear lines of communication and boundaries for school board members and principals
Popularity: 22% [?]
Clarifying lines of communication
Posted by Alan Gottlieb Dec 11th, 2009.
For outsiders like myself, what prompted this?
Trust Matters. Certainly, food for thought.
One principal told me that she’s not sure how much she would be able to communicate with Board members.
I’m curious what the policy is for principals to talk with the media. I’m a community newspaper reporter, and it’s been very good for us, for our readers and for our schools when I can go directly through schools to set up features and interview them for articles than if i were to try to go through the central communications all of the time.
I’m also curious how the Board learned of this, because is this a reaction to what a Board member said or tried to do, or is it something that a principal had tried to do and got confused, as both parties would need to understand their boundaries if there’s a problem. On a similar note, we in the media and blog rolls need to be just as cognizant and tactful so that we won’t get any hurdles put in our way.
After a particularly frustrating conversation on North High’s CSC the other night, I decided to look up the word “collaborate” to see if maybe I misunderstood the word. I think I have found the root to some of the problems we face while trying to discuss our public schools:
col·lab·o·rate
1. To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.
2. To cooperate treasonably, as with an enemy occupation force in one’s country.
I’d be very put off if I received this, in fact I’m put off even though I wasn’t on the address list. Here’s why:
But I’d urge that instead of learning the unique rules of that Kingdom so as not to violate its “laws,” you ponder instead, whether any such entity really can enact enforceable “policies” that fly in the face of everything you already know about glorious Colorado and the United States of which she is a part.
Members of the Colorado Boards of Education are the public’s interface with those political subdivisions of the state. Since the constitutional position of an elected County Superintendent of Schools is going unfilled, Boards themselves are hiring Superintendents as employees or contracted officials — not the other way around. I don’t believe that public officials can just hire people to be a buffer between their obligations and those trying to tell them those obligations are going unmet, as this prevents the electoral political process itself from functioning.
I like Mr. Boasberg from what I’ve seen. I even have a fair degree of confidence in his general counsel, Mr. Kechriotis. However, the “policy” cited seems to me to bear the footmarks of a previous attorney acting so as to (a) restrict constitutional rights of access to public officials and (b) imply there is some state or federal restriction that people might breach in their attempts to contact these officials. I’ll be researching whether there are any such restrictions and let you know, however I don’t expect to find any that either apply or would be enforceable if they did, since the peoples’ right of access to public entities is inherent under the federal constitution to my understanding.
Otherwise, local entities might simply adopt “policies” that state in effect, “From now on, we will take the public’s money and never meet with the public.”
I’m actually a little pleased to see this “policy” made public because to me it squarely represents the second phenomenon that seems to accompany this particular public entity: Over-empowerment. I don’t imagine that this element is separate from its other most distinctive feature: Under-achievement.
In being advised (by someone, probably not their marriage counselor) that it is acceptable to adopt “policies” such as this and to then attempt to enforce them by inference upon a since-seated Board as well as workers of the entity, I think what the district is really doing is attempting to curtail the Board members’ own control over the district. The statutory duties flow only to Board members and since they are the only ones being elected, this keeps the public itself from exercising political and actual control through those officials. By hiring someone to serve in their stead, and then limiting contacts to that person when the electing public has no constitutional right of access to that person as it does to elected Board members themselves, it seems to me the 2005 Board was violating one of the most essential precepts of democratic government — the right of the electorate to control public officials and entities through political means.
In any event, I suspect most principals attempting (in fear?) to contact Board members would probably say something like, “I’m unable to do my job because the administrator(s) above me won’t allow me to do it. He/she/they act like I signed up for the army.” The reason I suspect this is, everybody at DPS tends to act this way. Since none of the workers who’ve been there any length of time have been able to get the heck out of their jobs due to the pension mechanism, they’ve been living in the Kingdom of DPS where the customary yin-yang of employment relations cannot exist. It’s that yin-yang thing that keeps human beings from predating one another in the capitalistic workplace — so it’s likely or maybe even inevitable, that as workers get “farther down” on the Staff Importance scale, they will be subject to an increasingly repressed working condition. (If allowed to approach Board members, teachers would probably complain that they are being treated poorly by the principals, like younger kids wearing hand-me-downs.) Barring them from approaching the only people on the face of the earth who are possible sources of assistance and not themselves part of this mechanism, leaves workers and the public with no relief nor control at all.
Not only do I feel this is not legally nor politically a viable position for a public entity to take, but I also feel that it is one of the most fundamental causes for this district’s poor educational performance and demonstrates as a stand-alone the “Systemic Dysfunction” to which others have referred. Frankly, to me the policy reads as though it was written by a private attorney licking his or her lips over the prospect of several years’ expensive legal fees spent litigating the extent of the district’s muscle — not as a mechanism whereby (legitimate or other) concerns can be quietly and respectfully addressed on behalf of the Colorado taxpaying public and the students being served.
We don’t need a marriage counselor to point out that flexing our muscles (to the public, the state Board, injured citizens, workers or their unions) does not exactly give others a cooperative impression. It should also be unnecessary to state that if so many principals (or whatever) are crowding new Board members with their concerns that a memo had to go out, the taxpaying public would want them to be heard — even if, and especially if, this makes their employer “look bad.”
In short, we either give a darn about kids in these schools, or we are protecting the power of our Kingdoms. We can’t do both. Denver voters wanted a new day at DPS after decades of humblingly ineffective “reforms” — so I was disappointed to see this is how the brand-new Board has started out. If I was a principal OR a newly-elected member of the Board, I’d be discouraged, confused and yes — put out — to receive this policy instead of encouragement about presenting my concerns in an affirmative way according to some EFFECTIVE strategy. Clearly there isn’t one, or principals wouldn’t be trying to get through to Board members to begin with.
C’mon folks, let’s use some common sense. If there is dirty laundry to be aired, please let it be washed. If principals are such ninnies that they’re approaching the Board with bogus concerns, that also is something the public needs to know. Only please: no more silencing of voices, all this does is make the public wonder what would come out if it could, and why Board members AND WORKERS cannot talk to anyone and everyone in the exercise of their public duties.
To Mr. Cole, I would simply point out that I HOPE this entire thread is a startling revelation to you and anyone else who understands the First Amendment as well as a media writer should. You’re not just imagining it: there IS a separate little Kingdom over there, right in the middle of Denver, Colorado.