I was combing through some computer files recently, when I came across a newspaper column I wrote a year ago about the elected school board bill that was wending its way through the 2007 session of the Maryland General Assembly, only to eventually run out of steam and die.
I remember writing at the time I was conflicted about the elected board concept, believing it was probably the right thing to do, given the questionable management of Harford County Public Schools, but also being concerned about the likelihood that minorities, particularly blacks and Hispanics, who together make up 21 percent of the total student population — a far greater percentage than in the voting population, would have slim and none chances of ever being represented on an elected board.
The same issue is back before the legislature this year and, believe me, this time around I am a true believer in an elected board.
No matter how hard you try to convince me our school system is doing the right thing by our kids, I won't believe you. When you make kids eat lunch in a cafeteria amid the stink from a sewage line break or bring them into a building where major asbestos exposure has occurred just 24 hours before, you aren't doing right by any measure. If you place them in this kind of unhealthful environment, what does it say about how you are supposedly preparing them in the classroom for life's journey.
Those and many similar incidents tell me something is wrong from the top right on down the line. Remember last year when a school was kept open with no water to drink or flush toilets, but the official line was nobody was denied use of the bathroom. Horsefeathers, I say. Or, how about the administrator, since cashiered, who admonished a teacher and his students for complaining via e-mail about subhuman conditions at North Harford Middle School? What does that say about the character of some of the top managers in the system?
There have been too many stories like these not to see a troubling pattern of management incompetence bordering on worse. How do you change it? For starters, make the people who hire the superintendent answerable to the voters of Harford County, not to the governor, any governor regardless of political stripe, or to an influential local legislator or two who control the appointment process.
If the school board members are elected by the voters, I'll guarantee you the notion that board members work for the school superintendent, which is clearly the appearance of how it now goes in Harford County, will be laid to rest forever.
I'm not even concerned anymore about minority representation. If enough people will vote for an African-American woman to be a judge in Harford County — or if an African-American man with a Muslim sounding name can contend for and possibly win the presidency of the United States — qualified minority candidates can win school board seats in our county, regardless whether we fill them by at-large or in-district voting. The times, my friend, they definitely are a-changin'.
I say pass a bill this year which mandates that, as the existing school board members' terms expire, we elect their replacements to four-year terms. No need for a referendum which will only delay the inevitable. It's time to get off the pot and move ahead.
Our school system has 40,000 kids, 5,300 employees and a budget approaching $600 million. There's too much at stake to keep putting all this in the hands of bunch of political appointees, who might as well be answerable only to the Lowells and the Cabots — or, if you prefer, the Haases and O'Malleys — and many of you know how the rest of that doggerel goes.
The current setup is the proverbial recipe for disaster. It's time the people who pay the bills and hold all the stock have an actual say in choosing who sits on the board of directors of the biggest corporation operating strictly within the confines of Harford County.
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