This comment in another thread surprised me, because I would have thought the most important thing is to have a school board that’s good for the kids’ learning, and that may well conflict with being good for teachers. For example, the latter are likely concerned with job security, while children’s education might benefit from replacing worse teachers with better ones, or from adopting approaches like phonics that produce better results, but give teachers less control.
An obvious example from later in the Covid pandemic was teachers’ unions pushing to keep schools closed in order to protect their members from infection, at the cost of kids - especially disadvantaged ones - falling even further behind.
The same principle can also apply to other elected positions. For example, the UK now has an elected Police and Crime Commissioner for each police force area (these are pretty large), and picking someone who’d be good for the police themselves would not be a priority for me. I believe there are similar elected officials in some parts of the USA.
What do people think about this question? Other similar examples are also welcome.
(Sorry to pick on you, @Chronos; I thought it might make an interesting general question.)
Pros and Cons, typically a school board good for teachers seems to make for better schools. I’ve seen schools that are very heavy on non-teaching staff and they tend to give a lot less positive results for the tax-payers money.
As with most general statements, there can be plenty of examples that counter what I’ve seen, but it was really stark in Monmouth County, NJ. The best schools worked hard to have and keep good teachers and to not have too many administrator types. The towns with a lot of admin types or just refusing to pay teachers, tended to not do well by their students.
And I’m not including the financially disadvantaged towns which were dealing with deeper and more difficult issues. I’m talking about middle-class and upper-middle-class towns being compared to each other. The differences in favor of balanced towards teachers was clear.
Also I think the COVID question is an outlier and I don’t actually agree with you. Not only would the teachers be put at greater risk returning early, but those kids who were pretty resistant could carry COVID back to their homes and put their families at a higher risk. I support the decision to stay home despite the negative results in all too many cases. Sometimes there isn’t a great answer and pandemic is one of those times.
I lost two very good friends to COVID, one was pressured to go to work when sick and was sadly someone that didn’t get the vaccine. The other died early in pandemic and to all appearances, it was brought home by his child.
I think that what’s good for students and what’s good for teachers are mostly the same things. We’re not in it for the high pay; we’re in it because we love teaching. Whatever leads to the most learning is what’s best for both teachers and students.
The people who are best qualified to see how to make the classroom work better are people who have actually spent time in a classroom, and can see up close and personally the issues. Those would be the teachers.
IMO this is essentially a narrow version of the classic question: “Are unions good?”
Some amount of unionism is definitely good to offset the worst excesses of management. Too much unionism becomes self-serving to the detriment of the company and the customers. But where is the happy medium? And who’s to say?
It’s stupid to try to decide the OP’s question as a general matter.
Specifically as to school boards, there are lots of ignorant political ideological point-scorers among the candidates. At least in the present day USA. To the degree teachers and their unions push back againt know-nothing religiosity and MAGA, they do a service to all humanity.
In general, I think it’s preferable to have school boards that are good for teachers, because teachers know, at least in theory, what is good for the students. If you have split hairs, it’s best to have a school board that is good for students. Unfortunately, where we live, there’s at least one school board that appears to be good for administrators. You can imagine how f’d up that school district is.
In 2019 the teachers in our local school district went on strike. (I was deeply invested since my son was in third grade then.). The strike lasted about three weeks. Since then there have been several school board elections. The net result: The entire board has been replaced by people friendlier to teachers.
If the choice is between teachers and administrators, I would strongly back the teachers. I really doubt that school boards have any basis for knowing what is best for the students. Get the best teachers and let them figure it out.
I once spent two years as non-voting member of a school board representing parents (of elementary students; there was another for HS). I was impressed by how little they tried to interfere in the classroom and how well they got on with the union.
It’s been a long time since I was a teacher, but I think I would have settled for a school board that wasn’t openly hostile to teachers, or hired superintendents who were.