On whose authority?

School board members don’t need code of conduct

Journey with us for a moment to late 2009 and early 2010, back before anything called Obamacare existed but near the end of contentious debate about how Congress would change the way the nation handles health care and the insurance coverage that gives people access to it.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California, although she didn’t know it then, is in her last year as the speaker of the House. In November 2010, Republicans would sweep away the Democratic control of the House.

But her job in that early time is to get the president’s health care plan passed.

Now, imagine her showing up one day to distribute a proposed code of conduct for all members of Congress, one that includes the following restriction on how she and her colleagues will proceed with debate: “Review essential facts, consider others’ ideas and then present personal opinions during congressional deliberations, but once the House vote has been taken, support the House decisions regardless of how individuals have voted.”

Pelosi and her majority could get the proposed code of conduct passed without a problem if they all stick together.

Can you imagine John Boehner, Kevin McCarty, Mike Pence and other GOP members of Congress fighting hard to defeat Obamacare then showing up for work the day after it’s approved saying they support it because the majority did? Should the rules of the House really place an expectation on duly elected congressmen that they show only support for a measure once it has passed the full body?

Is that how you’d like to see your local school board operated?

Eric White came back to town from one of those school board conferences convinced the seven-member Bentonville School Board on which he serves needs a code of conduct, a road map toward unity so that the board can establish some kind of groupthink behavioral parameters that members can then use to hold individual members “accountable.”

Voters in every school district (except Little Rock these days) cast ballots to pick willing residents of their communities to serve five-year terms to provide policy direction and superintendent hiring/supervision. Admittedly, the “conduct” of some school members in the state — and Bentonville specifically — has been known to range from collaborative to bully-ish, from rational to irritating, from calm to insulting, all depending on the issue and the intensity of disagreement within the community.

In other words, they’re humans, thrown together by the authority of the people and given powers of oversight, not because they necessarily like each other or because they all think the same way, but because those individuals earned their position through the democratic process. That’s ’Merica.

State laws place parameters on the powers of the school board. How board members conduct themselves is really each member’s business. And that of the people who elected them.

The three-page code of conduct White has proposed assumes a majority of board members can establish expectations beyond the state-established responsibilities of the job. That assumption, we suggest, is misplaced.

It is not the job of any school board member to attempt to place restrictions on any other duly elected member of the school board. That’s a decision left up to the voters. If they feel a board member is effective and representing their interests, they will reelect him or her. If they feel the board member is counterproductive and disruptive to the best interests of the students and the district as a whole, someone else will run for the office and voters will make a new choice.

Nobody elects one board member to become the hall monitor of any other board members’ behaviors or governing philosophies.

White appears to be most concerned about how the school board is perceived in the community. He went so far as to suggest the school board’s behaviors affect student achievement, a tenuous linkage for sure. We don’t suggest it’s a great thing when a school board doesn’t get along well and demonstrates that fact in the way it interacts, but deliberative bodies are not easy and sometimes the process of reaching decisions is messy. Welcome to public service.

White’s document is based on one of those model policies that tend to treat political bodies across the nation as though they’re all the same or that their needs are alike. With room for each board member to sign at the bottom, the document, according to White, is geared toward achieving “teamsmanship.” His goal, he told the other members, is to get agreement on “the behaviors we’re going to exhibit and how we’re going to act.”

He’s making the same mistake others elected into public service have made: an assumption he owes allegiance to the public body he’s on when his duty, and that of other members, is to the public itself. School board members are elected as individuals. Yes, they are charged to work with the others on the school board, but the job is for each member to advocate what they believe to be best for students, not to establish a hive mind concerned with projecting false unity.

In a recent discussion, White further cemented a reason for opposing a homogenizing code of conduct. “There’s a reason for this. School boards change. … This is a legacy we can leave behind — how this board acts, how this board conducts itself, how this board has debate that’s productive and comes to a consensus … .”

If we object to one school board member, or even a majority, trying to dictate proper behaviors for all, we certainly object to the idea that those on the board in 2017 should attempt to set the expectations for school board members not even elected yet.

School Board President Travis Riggs says everyone who works in the district has a code of conduct, so it’s not too much to ask for the school board to have one. We disagree. Employees work directly for the district, which like any organization can set standards of professional conduct related to that employment. But school board members do not work for the district. They don’t work for each other. Each board member works for the people they represent — the public and the students the district serves.

White appears to think this is a harmless proposal that’s only going to produce positive relationships in the push to do right by Bentonville students. It arises from a misplaced notion that strong decisions and leadership require getting along and being part of a “team” that avoids “communicating negative or provocative content that would cause embarrassment or conflict to the district in person, digitally, or on social media.”

Who among equals is going to become the enforcement agent for that? Who judges when something is “negative” vs. a different perspective that needs to be heard?

School districts need leaders who are strong advocates — yes, even sometimes passionate ones that might make other school board members squirm a little — not people who are constantly worried that the airing of dissension reflects weakness.

The best remedy to a disruptive, ineffective school board member is the next election. The public’s decision is really the only code of conduct that needs to be enforced on Bentonville School Board members.