Give Teachers Veto Power over School Boards
[posted 2005.03.06]
 

THE PLAN:	1) School boards rewrite their school district handbooks to give teachers the power to rescind school board action by a 2/3 vote.
	2) Teacher veto power may be exercised only a clearly defined set of major school issues spelled out by the board upon establishment of this system of shared school governance.

I just read an opinion piece about Pam Gough, a fine drama teacher and director at Stevens High School in Rapid City (1). The article got me thinking how precarious a position teachers are in. They can work as hard as they wish in their classrooms, positively affect as many young lives as possible, do everything they can think of to reach kids, and still, the moment they do one little thing that can be interpreted as a violation of some subclause of a subclause, a sufficiently motivated contingent of the administration and school board can fire that teacher. Teachers don't live or die on job performance; rather, they are constantly subject to the politics of the school and the community.

What protections against arbitrary termination do teachers have now? Very few. Public school teachers in South Dakota receive “tenure” after three years on the job, but it is a remarkably tenuous tenure. What's the difference between a tenured teacher and a non-tenured teacher? For the first three years of a new teacher's employment, a school board may choose not to renew the teacher's contract for the coming school year without stating any reasons whatsoever. If a school board chooses not to renew a tenured teacher, the board must state a reason, and the tenured teacher is entitled to appeal that non-renewal and request a hearing before the board. But school boards have broad latitude in the reasons they may give for not renewing a contract. School boards can also suspend and terminate any teacher, tenured or non-tenured, at any time during the school year for any of a broad set of causes.

The real guarantee of job security in public schools is thus not tenure, certainly not performance or longevity, but the ability not to get on anyone's bad side. Some do that by playing local politics. More do that by keeping their heads down, doing their jobs quietly, and never doing anything that might get them noticed. Some teachers avoid giving Fs, especially to children of board members or other prominent community members. Some teachers give nothing but easy assignments, all graded high, to keep kids and parents off their backs. Many teachers avoid bringing up valid objections to school projects or policies proposed by the boards, the administration, or even by faculty committees for fear of being labeled a boat-rocker or “not a team player.” Fear of offending anyone who might threaten their jobs makes teachers dull, spiritless conformists—not exactly the role models most people want for their children.

So I started wondering what we could do to give teachers some real job security, to protect them from the vagaries of local politics and free them to be more creative and open with their students and colleagues. I hesitate to offer teachers genuine, iron-clad tenure: for every teacher who has been unjustly fired due to petty back-biting among the powers that be, there is probably a teacher who has been fired for good reason or a teacher who ought to be fired for laziness and incompetence. In legal appeals of school board decisions, the courts have regularly and rightly deferred to the locally elected school board's right to interpret and execute its duties with minimal second-guessing from the courts. School boards need to have the authority to hire and fire staff and set the rules for their own schools.

One might suggest revising the rules that govern just cause for terminating a teacher, but that won't solve the problem. No matter how strictly those rules are written, a motivated principal or superintendent, with the help of a sufficiently skillful lawyer, can read almost any action of a teacher as a violation of some rule. If board members want to remove a teacher, they will believe what they want to believe. Facts will cede priority to politics.

Protecting teachers from local politics is a question of power, not reason. When the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, they recognized the fallibility of men, the passions and prejudices that could rule their decision-making. Thus, while they provided for institutions—Congress, the Supreme Court—where matters of state would be subjected to rational discussion, they also created the system of checks and balances to prevent the passions of any one group from overwhelming the rule of reason and law. The Constitution gives the President veto power over Congress, not because he is wiser than the members of Congress, but because if Congress makes a selfish or irrational decision, we need to have someone in a position to block that decision. The Supreme Court can declare a law or an executive order unconstitutional. Congress can amend the Constitution or even impeach judges. The checks and balances of the federal government are not policies of rational discourse; they are policies of power. The Founding Fathers put them there because they recognized that we cannot rely on government officials to act with perfect reason all the time.

Imperfect people are found at all levels of government—federal, state, and local. Thus, all levels of government require checks and balances. And here perhaps lies the main problem in job security for teachers. The power of local school boards is not sufficiently checked and balanced. A board must still have authority over its school, but its authority over teachers is disproportionate, especially in South Dakota, where lowest-in-the-nation teacher salaries put teachers at a financial disadvantage when they have to hire a lawyer to fight a termination or non-renewal and where a no-strike law limits teachers' collective leverage against a troublesome board.

So let's give teachers some protection against abuses of power by the school board by giving them a veto over school board decisions. Such power-sharing could take various forms, but let's start with something simple. Let's give teachers authority to vote on the renewal and termination of contracts. If the school board votes to terminate or not renew a teacher's contract, let the teachers have a two-week period during which they may call their own meeting to discuss and vote on the matter. If the teachers as a body suspect a teacher is being unjustly treated by the board, the teachers may vote to reject the board's decision. Such a vote would require more than a simple majority—vetoing a board decision should not be easy. A 2/3 vote of the teachers seems like a reasonable super-majority for such a serious issue. 2/3 of the teaching staff will not likely rise up to oppose their school board to save the job of a genuine miscreant. But if a good teacher is falling victim to local politics, a 2/3 majority could act to keep that teacher where she or he belongs: in the classroom, helping kids.

Such a plan would certainly boost teachers' morale. Too commonly, teachers feel powerless at work. They feel that even when they do all the right the things and follow all the rules, some sufficiently peeved student or parent or administrator can still cobble together a case that can convince a risk- and lawsuit-averse school board to get rid of them. A power-sharing agreement between the board and teachers would alleviate this feeling of powerlessness and make all teachers feel a bit more secure in tackling their jobs enthusiastically and creatively.

And believe it or not, school boards could benefit from such a policy as well. Firing a teacher is a tough decision for a school board. Giving teachers a say over such matters spreads the responsibility. Suppose a board fires a teacher, and that firing is then referred to a vote of the teachers. If the firing is upheld, board members have some more political cover.

Granted, this plan doesn't solve everything. If administrators and school boards can succumb to local politics, so can teachers. The same forces that get a fearful principal and a majority of a school board to railroad a teacher might also persuade 1/3 + 1 of the teachers to vote to uphold such a railroading. We will never get rid of people's imperfections. But by checking and balancing power, we can make it harder for those imperfections to do harm to teachers, students, and the common educational good.

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