Jim Butt, whose new blog I mentioned last week, asks (in a recent comment) about incentives for more transparency on the part of school boards. I can think of no personal economic incentives for individual board members, and I’m not even sure that more openness brings any particular advantage politically. It probably does in some instances, but in others it may merely energize the opposition.
I think of openness as an ethical imperative. It’s also good strategy when it comes to contract negotiations, which is one of the three important functions left to Pennsylvania school boards. My own expertise is limited, but I’ve been impressed by books (and a few conversations) with Myron Lieberman. Dr. Lieberman began his career as a public school teacher and soon became a union negotiator. He negotiated on the union behalf for districts in California and New York (and once ran for president of the AFT). At some point he became convinced that the teacher unions had become barriers to serious progress in public education, especially in urban areas. He also concluded that they weren’t doing a good job of representing teachers as professionals — since their negotiating model is based on industrial unionism. In effect, he switched sides and became one of a very few people who has been a consultant for the AFT, NEA and a number of school boards.
One of his books, Understanding the Understanding the Teacher Union Contract; A Citizen’s Handbook, offers an excellent clause-by-clause explanation of typical contract language and its implications for a final settlement. It’s not exactly a fast read — more of reference work, just as the subtitle indicates.
A more informative general book, The Teacher Unions; How They Sabotage Educational Reform and Why, is both readable and enlightening. It’s polemical but not a rant. Lieberman isn’t in the least outraged that unions should represent their members aggressively. His tone is matter-of-fact.
I first read The Teacher Unions during a contested negotiation. When I hit pages 52-53 (in a chapter called “Bargaining with the NEA/AFT”), I wondered if Lieberman had somehow spent several months in Carlisle taking notes. It was as if the PSEA negotiator were following a script Lieberman knew by heart — which she was and he did.
Back to the question: are there real incentives for boards to be more transparent? Probably not, if a board puts a high value on avoiding controversy. What people don’t know has no way to become controversial. Yes, if a board has an educational and fiscal plan that the board realizes will need a unusual degree of public support — e.g., building a new high school, making the case for a tax increase above the Act I ceiling, or negotiating a more flexible contract than the teachers union wants. (There are things a union negotiator will fight for behind closed doors but won’t even try to defend in public — e.g., a health plan that mandates dealing with one named vendor. The public understands the value of competition in insurance.)
