Loose Cannon On Campus?

A local story here involves a now former school board member who had been arrested for battery involving a group of students outside their high school. The full story is here. In brief, when he saw a group of students attempting to enter the school through a "restricted" door, he "ordered" them to follow him to the Dean's office. Along the way, he grabbed another student by the arm and ordered him to come along also. That student refused and filed a battery complaint against the school board member. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charge and the board member resigned from the board because he moved out of the district. He also took the opportunity to declare he'd done nothing wrong and that his actions made him a "hero."

The story is troubling for several reasons. My first concern is that comments on the newspaper story clearly indicate that many people have no clue what school board members are or what their job is. Many commenters lauded him for "doing the job he was hired for" and wondered why the prosecutors filed charges against him for "doing his job." He is not a "staff member." He was a school board member which is an elective office, not an employee of the District. He was totally out of line to attempt to herd a bunch of students to "the office."

Another issue is that school board members as individuals have no particular authority over students or even staff members of a school, or to enforce rules on campus. In fact, in Illinois, the oath of office for school board members states "...a Board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a public Board meeting." One school board member equals one citizen, nothing more, nothing less.

This guy is not a hero (since when do people get to declare themselves heroes?). If he thought the students were "behaving suspiciously," he should have called police, not intervene personally. His wife, who was with him in the car, and is a teacher at the high school, might have legitimately gotten involved. His claim that he was concerned about security at the high school rings hollow and sounds more like someone searching for a campaign slogan.

He is nothing more than a bully and the District is better off that he's now resigned. He clearly had no clue what the role of a school board member is and apparently didn't care very much about that small detail. For those who are petrified about students bringing guns or bombs to school, it can happen, but it doesn't get prevented by a board member who happens to be sitting in his car. It's prevented by adoption of procedures and rules by school boards and administrators, not by loose cannons on campus.

What Makes One Curmudgeonly?

I've been an elected member of our local elementary school board since 1988 and throughout those years, we've been faced with serious underfunding issues. In Illinois, public education is funded primarily by property taxes at the local level. Without getting really detailed and boring, that system was workable up to the first half of the 20th century, but it's hopelessly maxed out now. Schools are subject to the same kinds of increasing costs (mostly related to salaries and benefits for staff which may consume 80% of a School District's budget) as the rest of the world, but property tax revenue is pretty much tapped out. In addition, as an early effort to pander to the voters, Illinois placed property tax limitations on schools in the Chicago suburbs years ago, so school districts are left with nowhere to go for necessary funds. Oh, did I mention that Illinois has a 3% flat income tax, one of the lowest in the nation? The State itself is now going broke itself with an estimated $11 billion deficit.

There are a lot of other reasons for our financial problems (like too many districts, too many local government units, etc), but IMO the biggest problem is our political leaders' inability to actually lead. Rather than suggest to us what we should do to solve societal problems, our so-called "leaders" devote their energy to telling us what they think we want to hear.

This is a leading cause of curmudgeon-ness (at least for me). No matter what political party is in power (and right now the State legislature and executive branch is controlled by Democrats), 99% of the politicians in Illinois are unwilling or unable to actually provide leadership. The pandering to the public is mind-numbing and relentless ("Taxes are too high," "Cut waste in government before we raise taxes"). The result has been gridlock. And don't get me started on our ex-Governor Blago; he was the King of Pandering. He's (in)famous for handing out free rides to everyone in the State over the age of 65 on public transportation (without providing any cash to the transit systems, of course). Well, that's only one of the things he's (in)famous for...

What politicians won't tell the public is that while Illinois has made graft, waste, and cronyism an artform) most of the State's budget issues are related to human services (education, health care, senior citizen care, highways, and the like). Citizens are all for cutting services that benefit someone else, but not so keen on cutting something that might affect themselves. And that's the underlying problem, for which we can maybe thank Ronald Reagan. We have lost that concept that there is a "public good" and that we as a people do things for the benefit of the many, not just for the benefit of the few. This was pretty much assumed back in the 1950s, but no more. As a society, we're preoccupied with "not in my backyard" and "what's in it for me?"

To quote Ashleigh Brilliant: "I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem."