Been thinking' about.....school calendars

There have been debates, and arguments, over public school annual calendars for at least the last thirty years. Recently, newspaper headlines shouted that thirteen counties had 'Gone Rogue' and violated a state law that set public school calendar dates. This issue brings to mind two things I’ve been thinking about for years.

First, leadership. Good leadership directs WHAT to do, not HOW to do it. Examples of this basic principle surround us daily. If your house is on fire, you call and ask to PUT IT OUT! That’s the WHAT. When the fire truck and crew arrive, you do not tell them how to connect the hoses, that’s the How to get it done. Much of our lives glide on "What not How." When you want carrots in the super market, you care little about how they got there. Got a flat tire on your car?…someone just come and fix it. The Second World War strategy is a majestic example of leadership; political leaders said WHAT to do (win in Europe first, then defeat Japan) and the armed forces decided HOW to do it. We leave the How to others who have committed their lives to accomplishing a task or developing the skills to innovate and achieve.

Local School Board members have committed some of their lives to deciding How to have the best school system in their county (I know we have more than 100 local systems and that a few board members are appointed but that’s for another article). Every four years school board members stand for reelection based upon HOW well their neighbors think they did the job. The WHAT is determined by our General Assembly…the number of days that it takes to teach a year’s curriculum. The calendar debate is actually over the violation of a basic leadership principle and the violator is the General Assembly. If our assemblies have decided that it takes a specific number of days to deliver a standard course of study in one academic year, that is their constitutional prerogative. Those are the number of days for which the people are willing to pay. That academic year is the WHAT. When to start and finish an academic year is part of the HOW for a local board. The school start/end debate ends the instant our General Assembly follows a principle of basic leadership.

Last.  I’ve been thinking about how surprisingly weak the North Carolina School Boards Association (NCSBA) is in the political arena of public education. There are over eight hundred locally elected members of school boards across North Carolina. They are spread over all one hundred counties. Each one represents the endorsement of hundreds, if not thousands, of voters with children in our schools. Every school board member lives in the district of a State Senator and a State Representative. This elected group, with a magnificent grass-roots organization, gets shoved aside on a yearly basis! How sad! In one year, any savvy political organizer, given the opportunity, could turn the NCSBA into this state’s most powerful educational lobbying force. What legislator wouldn’t react positively to a coordinated campaign to allow counties to determine their beginning and ending dates?

The reason we have a few "Rogue Local School Boards" is that they are represented by an association of marshmallows.