In a LinkedIn commentary posted Monday, Pleasanton school board president Joan Laursen lamented about the fact that there will be no school board election in November because no one challenged the three incumbents who are seeking re-election.

Her commentary follows:

The filing period has closed and no one has stepped up to challenge the three incumbents running for the school board, so PUSD will not be on the ballot in November. What does this mean for our community?

One might argue that the absence of any challengers means that the community is, in the main, satisfied with the performance of its school board. There is probably a certain amount of truth to this.

While there may be concerns with individual decisions made by the board as a whole, or by the particular votes of a single trustee, it takes a lot of passion and maybe a little outrage to see yourself fighting and winning a seat of your own. What do you bring to the table that is different and better than those currently serving? Given your understanding of the issues, what do you hope to change? It is such a huge step from individual advocacy to making policy.

However, I would argue that there is more than a little fatalism evidenced in our local election cycle. Do folks really believe that they can make a difference? School communities feel pretty powerless in the face of the seemingly never-ending bad news from Sacramento.

Despite our continued success story as a school district (more on that in a later post), board members have had four years of increasingly difficult decisions to make. And even in good times, if you're doing it right, the job is HARD! Little glory, lots of guts.

As a result of 40 years of court decisions and legislative policies (to name just a few -- Serrano vs. Priest, the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA, Prop 13, the movement to state standards, the federal NCLB's emphasis on testing, and a state Ed Code so convoluted it functions as an attorney jobs act), there seem to be fewer and fewer truly "local" decisions. In fact, it seems the only time the legislators trust us puny local leaders is when we have cuts to make…when they are handing out money, there are always strings attached!

So since school boards are, in fact, state agencies carrying out the state function of providing public education to a community's children, why do we need locally elected board members anyway? Actually, there are quite a number of so-called education reformers who think elected school boards should be abolished.

No less than Arne Duncan, our U.S. Secretary of Education, who does not believe in their value. I quote directly from a 2009 article in The Times-Picayune "that Duncan came down squarely against local elected boards as the governance structure for large, urban districts." He said he favors mayoral control, appointed school boards or some type of top-down authority…He argues that elected school boards in urban districts lead to a perpetual churn of superintendents, leadership and policies.

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix and former president of the (California) State Board of Education, has also said that elected school boards impede the growth of student achievement. He feels that elected school boards are too subject to political winds, and to maintain student achievement growth, we need more consistency and longer-termed leaders.

"It is the system that says you have to make a difference in your short term that is the fundamental problem," Hastings said of school board members. (The Advocate, 2011) Hastings, as a charter school advocate, thinks that appointed non-profit boards, where sitting members select new board members, is a better model.

But where in appointed self-perpetuating boards is the voice of the public? According to the National School Boards Association, we have had laymen overseeing the public education of our youth since 1721! And since 1826, those community members have been elected. In a representative democracy, it is not necessarily speed and efficiency that is most valued, but the ability of the local community to have a voice in their own governance and the education of their children.

For Pleasanton, a wealthy community with highly-educated parents, our task is to deepen our "bench". We must encourage others to get involved and mentor future board members whether they are parent volunteers or business leaders. We must, by our actions, show that their participation does make a difference. And we must continue our efforts to promote our excellent school district and help our community understand the challenges and opportunities we face together. Our students depend on it.

--Pleasanton Weekly staff.

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