Max Higgs made a comment on Facebook that I believe deserves promotion:
It seems there is a need for a more balanced training for new school board members. Candidates for school boards have aspirations and ideas for changes to improve their schools, but they attend training programs and listen to lawyers which present an educationalist point of view. There is little prospect for change when would be change agents are indoctrinated in the mind set which has created the problems in public education.
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We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
The essence of public school is destroyed by the fact that “teachers” get to strike and determine by force what they earn and under what conditions they work. Couple that with the recent trend in obtaining additional taxpayer funding for infrastructure, tremendous amounts of money in and of itself, when the existing infrastructure was poorly maintained due to conversion of maintenance monies to salaries.
If you think I am wrong then provide a cogent explanation for what the U.S. taxpayer’s spend on education vs. the resulting lack of education received by students.
Teachers want to tie education to their salaries, but they vehemently oppose any measure of testing to see if students are learning anything.
As long as teachers run the show this trend will only get worse. Why do ANY public employees have a union? Are they claiming that taxpayers are repressive employers?
End public employee unions and bring an end to teachers using force to deny students an education. Public school isn’t supposed to be about teacher pay, it is supposed to be about teaching our children.
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Once again the unknown one gets it only partly correct. Teachers do *not* “run the show,” because if that were true, you’d see more money being spent in the classrooms, instead of administratively. Teachers, just like any other profession, must retain the ‘right to strike,’ because they do indeed have the same rights as everyone else, and the educational system all too often ignores those rights. You need to explain how you believe that teachers want “to tie education to their salaries,” because that statement not only fails to make sense, but is blatantly the opposite of reality! What teachers are protesting is not the use of tests, but the push by administration to hang everything on test results, which has led to the profession being all about “teaching to the test,” which has cheated way too many students out of a well rounded education. My wife is a retired classroom teacher, and I once worked as a school nurse, so we do know what we are talking about, and you, sir or ma’am, need to become better informed.
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A lot of people end up on a board with no idea of how a board, much less the organization functions, e.g., roles of officers, Roberts Rules, reporting, etc. Some type of organization development training would be a good thing. UTEP’s business school would do well to offer a “Boards 101” every so often for local public entities.
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Paso del Norte Health Foundation has such a program.
https://pdnhf.org/news/2019-realize-board-training-program-lunch-learn-series
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Duty of Loyalty — Each board member must put the interests of the organization before their personal and professional interests when acting on behalf of the organization in a decision-making capacity. The organization’s needs come first.
This has been problematic with local school boards where people run for personal reasons, e.g., to get even with a teacher or to get contracts for family members. Wasn’t YISD shut down some years ago by the State because the board members could not get past their personal vendettas?
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