Archive: Opinions

After going to some lengths to explain to the public that comments about an employee's performance or negative comments about an employee would not be allowed in a public school board meeting, a number of such comments were made in Monday's public Board Of Education meeting.  The comments were both positive and negative, but explicitly pertained to the employee's performance.  My understanding of education law and common sense is that comments about an employee's performance should be made through the chain of command, and board discussion of this topic should be conducted in executive session (private meeting) only, one of the few exceptions in education law to the mandate that almost all board business must be conducted in public.

I can't judge the veracity of the comments that were made in public because I haven't had a child in that school for two years.  I know and like the individual, and my impression is that he does a good job, though I understand that his style is very very different from that of his predecessor.  But all of that is beside the point.

Allowing public comments about his or any other employee's performance was wrong in my opinion.  It's not that people aren't talking about it -- they are.  It's not that the comments are unjustified -- parents' concerns about school issues are among the most justified things I can think of in this world.  I certainly speak out on issues that impact my children, and all parents have an obligation to do so.

What this is about is a reasonable expectation that every school employee should be able to have that discussion and decisions about their professional behavior will be conducted within an established chain of command using a procedure that is spelled out beforehand.  Even the worst employee does not deserve to be humiliated in a public meeting like a Medieval person accused of wrongdoing placed in the stocks in the public square.  That's what happened in Lansing Monday, and it was wrong.

School board members, no doubt, felt under intense pressure to appear as if they are open to public comment, and afraid that cutting off speakers would lead to accusations that they are not.  That was certainly palpable in the room.  But they are elected in part to take the heat.  While I have great respect and sympathy for those seven very good people who care deeply about the schools and their community and consistently try to make the best, responsible decisions, my take is that they bowed to pressure at the expense of an employee this time.  I will say that it was a very rare lapse in my years of observing the Lansing school board.

Allowing this to happen undermines a person in a leadership position's ability to address concerns such as teacher morale in the school, even though the board ultimately voted to grant him tenure.  I can't speak for the individual, but I would have felt humiliated by the negative and positive comments alike.  I would have felt I was in the impossible position of being attacked without the option of defending myself.  Not to belabor the Medieval parallels, I don't see how this was metaphorically different from a public stoning.

I want to be clear: I do not fault the citizens who stood up to speak on an issue that they felt needed to be addressed.  I think this was a lapse of the school board for not shutting down comments that they had already explained were not acceptable in a public meeting.  I hope, as other personnel issues come before the board that they will be more vigilant in insisting that their own procedures be followed, even if it gives the mistaken appearance that they are not receptive to public comments.

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