Senate Bill 8, currently being considered by the state legislature, would overhaul the current 15-member board that governs schools in the Commonwealth. Under the current system, all of the voting members of the board are appointed by the governor; something that legislators seem to find perfectly acceptable when they are the party in control of the seat, and absolutely galling when the governor is from the opposing party.
Senate Bill 8 would change the board from an appointed to an elected body – chosen in partisan elections.
“The accountability needs to be to the citizens of Kentucky – not to the governor,” explained the bill’s sponsor, Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson, of Bowling Green, after introducing the measure.
And he makes a decent point there.
The board should be accountable to the students, and the parents, of the state. Not to the governor, nor to any political party. But Wilson’s bill would make the positions even more partisan; extending the gridlock and teeth gnashing over minutiae we’ve come to expect from other realms of partisan politics even deeper into education policy.
Politics are not sports teams. We shouldn’t ever support anyone just because they are “on our team,” something we already do much too often. We are way too willing to overlook, forgive, and even justify what are clearly abhorrent statements and repugnant ideas – words and policies we would vigorously attack if they came from our political opponents. We overlook their weaknesses because they are “better than the other guy,” when often they are not.
In short, partisan identity – while often a convenient shorthand for identifying folks who share some ideas and values with you – isn’t the best way of choosing the individuals most suited to an office or a job. Sometimes it’s not even the best way of choosing folks who share your core values. It’s just a color, red or blue, that we’ve chosen to associate ourselves with because that’s how our parents or grandparents always voted.
The father of our nation, George Washington, was said to be opposed to political parties for these very reasons.
In an interview with Lexington’s WEKU, Jefferson County Teachers Association president Brent McKim told the radio station he had concerns about injecting more partisan politics into education as well.
“We do not need to make the Kentucky Board of Ed more political, we need to make it, if anything, less political,” McKim said.
“We’ve seen what overly partisan politicians have done at the national level,” he continued. “We need a Kentucky Board of Ed that is focused on teaching and learning, and that means it should remain nonpartisan.”
One potential solution would be to have the seats on the board be elected positions, but to have the candidates run without a party affiliation, much like judges currently do. In such an election, and without the crutch of straight-party voters to prop them up, the candidates would have to campaign on actual issues. They would have to present actual policy points. They’d have to answer real questions. They’d have to prove they were the person best suited to the roll.
This isn’t what Wilson and other GOP senators seem to want, however. When questioned about why making the seats partisan was important, he said party affiliation “gives much more information to a vote” about what a candidate would support.
And that’s true if they are pursuing a specific partisan agenda.
But our kids deserve better than a partisan agenda, and turning the school board into another venue for Red vs Blue sparring matches. They deserve folks with clear plans for improving their educational opportunities, making sure schools are equitably funded, and making sure the teachers we entrust them to are fairly compensated.
Nothing in Senate Bill 8 guarantees any of these things. What it does promise to do is bring if not more, then a different layer of partisan gridlock into education.
That’s something we just can’t support.
