Vantage Point: Protecting public education—that’s what we were elected to do 

At the Celebrating Educational Opportunities Conference in Tempe, Ariz., this spring, keynote speaker Claudio Sanchez, educational correspondent for National Public Radio, made the comment that decisions on educational reform are being made without school boards. He said that we are being circumvented.

I started to think about the truth of that statement. It is certainly true when the president of the United States advocates spending $100 million on a voucher program while cutting spending to American public schools. It is true when the state Board of Education approves statewide benefit charter schools, schools that are free to open anywhere in the state without local oversight and without any input from the communities that they claim to serve. The SBE recently took such action in approving High Tech High School, and there are more statewide benefit charters in the pipeline for future approval.

It certainly is the case in Los Angeles, where Mayor Villaraigosa is trying to take over Los Angeles Unified School District, usurping the role of the duly elected school board. The mayor seems to be indifferent to the many successes that district has experienced in recent years, including dramatic increases in test scores: The number of schools scoring above 600 on the Academic Performance Index has increased 64 percent in the past six years, yet the number of schools scoring below 400 on the API has dropped from 53 percent in 1999 to less than 1 percent last year. In addition, 15 schools received an API score above 900, and 80 more are rated above 800. LAUSD is involved in the largest building project in the history of the U.S. public schools, costing $19.2 billion. Public approval of the bond measures financing this building project is strong evidence of the support that the LAUSD school board enjoys in the community.

If the mayor really wanted to improve the schools, he would work with the school district, not try to take it over.

Let there be no mistake about it, a power grab on one school district is an attack on all of us and our authority and ability to govern our school districts and make decisions on behalf of our students.

As our vision statement says, “The California School Boards Association envisions a state where the public schools are widely recognized as the foundation of a free and democratic society, where local citizen governing boards are fully vested with the means to advance the best interests of students and the public, and where the futures of all children are driven by their aspirations, not bounded by their circumstances.” Notice that it says local citizen governing boards.

We need to protect public schools from voucher initiatives, statewide benefit charter schools and mayoral takeovers because public schools are the foundation of our free and democratic society. These are all examples of undercutting the authority and ability of locally elected citizen boards to make decisions in the best interest of their students and communities. We have the responsibility of educating 90 percent of students in the state. That is what our communities elected us to do, and that is exactly what we intend to do.