WHAT’S HAPPENED TO OUR SCHOOL BOARD?

 By Mary McGarr

March 12, 2008

As an “outsider” who was elected to the School Board in 1991 with a strong grass roots effort, I found myself in a club of gentlemen who at first were not so gentlemanly. But I knew what I had bargained for, and I did my best to stay true to myself and do what I knew to be the right thing.

Did I find myself outnumbered and overwhelmed at times? Of course I did. My self descriptive nickname was “Six to One Mary.” The rest of the Board didn’t like that designation because of what it said about them as well as me.

However, I must tell you that the Board understood and knew it’s role in those years. The power of the Board at that time came from state law, and we were charged with “managing and governing” the school district, and we also had the authority over the budget and the curriculum. We dutifully exercised that control.

Unfortunately, in 1995, Senate Bill I was passed. No one could foresee that minimal changes in wording would so greatly affect local control. The power of “managing and governing” was changed ever so subtly to “governing and OVERSEEING the management of” the school district.

While the bill’s authors, Senator Bill Ratliff (R.) and Representative Paul Sadler (D.), both liberals, were shouting from the treetops that they were “returning local control,” what they did not tell anyone was that the “local control” was being given to the “local” superintendent.

The bill passed easily because our tax dollars, given to non-governmental organizations like the Texas Association of School Boards, the Texas Association of School Administrators, the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals, and so on, with their vested and selfish interests, were used by members of these organizations to lobby the legislators. These lobbyists made phony pleas to get things changed so that the administrators no longer had to put up with powerful elected school boards.

The bill also gave budget authority to the superintendent, and thus the School Board essentially became powerless. The hope of the Democrat Lieutenant Governor, at the time, Bob Bullock, was that a state income tax was just around the corner for Texans, and that when the Constitutional Amendment was passed allowing that tax, then School Boards would become a thing of the past--having meaningless authority and no control over the money because it would come directly from the state to the superintendent.

The local school board until 1995 had served as the legislative body setting policy as one would expect in a representative form of government. Having such a duty worked well for a great many years, but such a powerful body also got in the way of administrators and especially superintendents.

As a school board member from 1991 to 1996 who was seriously outnumbered, I have to report that my colleagues on the Katy School Board were still running the district (as opposed to the superintendent running the district as we have now) and allowed me to speak whenever I had something to say, and, thanks to fellow Board member Stanley Thompson, I was always allowed to place items on the agenda, and make motions with regard to those agendas whenever I thought I needed to do so. And no one was afraid to second one of my motions if it had merit. No one ever tried to create rules to shut me up or keep those who elected me from having a representative on the Board.

I accepted the spirit in which that privilege was offered and did my best to not take advantage of it. However, I often voted against the multitude of items placed in front of us each month at the Regular Board meeting (primarily because, unlike my peers, I went to the trouble to check out EVERY thing that was placed in front of me on my own, deciding early on that I could not trust the superintendent to always tell me the truth). While spirited discussions were often held, both in executive sessions (when legal--and I tried to make sure of that), as well as in public, no one ever thought that we should not engage in such discussions. That is, until Joe Kimmel was elected.

Mr. Kimmel did not like to spend his time at meetings, and in my opinion, it was his desire to cut short any and all discussion as his mind was made up, and he figured it didn’t matter what the rest of us thought. Mr. Kimmel, who had to run a couple of times too before he got elected (losing to Ken Burton the first time he ran), soon ingratiated himself with the superintendent and was quickly given leadership roles. He was, to put it mildly, a TEAM player.

Team players are what the administration likes to see. If one has been steeped like a cup of hot tea in Total Quality Management skills, as Mr. Kimmel had been, so much the better. The administration can then count on the team player (and “robot” is a better word choice for what they are) to go along no matter what.

What bureaucratic employee doesn’t like such an arrangement?

Since that time, I have witnessed the downfall of representative government in our school district.

Thanks, Mr. Kimmel!

One might say, what difference does it make? Well, it makes a lot of difference. I noticed that the current superintendent, Alton Frailey, decided recently to render an opinion piece, and in it he made the cavalier statement that “They [successes of students] are a direct result of the implementation of a system of schooling that is based on the ideals and values held by this community.”

I beg to differ regarding our superintendent’s assessment of our school district being a reflection of the “ideals and values” held by this community. Mr. Frailey has no idea what those “ideals and values” are, and he does not want to know. Our students are being schooled with HIS “ideals and values” and those have to do with being dumbed down, made into compliant malleable workers, and not allowed to be academically educated so THEY as citizens of our country can decide for themselves who and what they want to be. The school board has lost control and no longer is able to even curtail the ridiculous statements that emanate from this superintendent much less control his actions.