Called to Serve

This May, we honor the dedication of our school board members. The work they do oftentimes goes unnoticed, but the impact they have on our school district is enormous. There is no mistaking the fact it takes quite a sacrifice to serve on this body. While we are blessed to be largely drama free, from time to time a difficult issue lands on the table. That is when the phone calls come. The emails. The confrontation at a meeting. I am grateful our board members are able to handle even the toughest issues with grace, professionalism, empathy, and tremendous poise. We have an outstanding school board here in Hudson. Where some school boards are composed of individuals who harbor personal agendas or vendettas, that is not the case here. Those who serve on our school board do so out of a sense of service to their community. They genuinely want to help. They want Hudson to be the best school district in the state. 

The work that all of us do in schools, regardless of the role, is almost always future oriented. In the case of our teachers, the hard work put in with students today may not be realized for a decade or more down the road. The same holds true for those who serve on the school board. Truthfully, it is no stretch of the imagination to state the decisions made by the Board of Directors are often generational. 

May offers a unique opportunity to pull back the curtain and recognize the dedicated individuals shaping the future of our district. While teachers are the heart of the classroom, the school board members are the navigators steering the entire ship. Their vision provides a framework that allows our educators to thrive, and our students to succeed. From studying the intricacies of special education policy and caseload analysis to considering staffing ratios, we owe a debt of gratitude to these volunteers who balance budgets, set policies, and champion the needs of every child.

When most folks think about the school board, they likely think about the meeting that happens once or twice a month. It may be easy to overlook the work they do-mostly because it is done in the evening; meetings that can run late into the night while contemplating thick budget reports or heady and complex policy discussions. But I can promise you, the work that goes into serving on the school board is a much greater time commitment than a couple hours a month!

Perhaps you glance over the agenda and read the minutes in the newspaper. Maybe from time to time you look over the monthly bills with passing interest. If that is the extent of your working knowledge of a school board, it is totally understandable. However, it merely scratches the surface of the work they do. The impact of the school board is felt by every student, parent, and educator in the district.  

Discernment toward serving, at least here in Hudson generally includes a stop here in my office. Would be candidates have a lot of questions, notwithstanding the logistics and mechanics of board operations. In our pre-service workshops, we spend time getting into the weeds of what to expect if they run and ultimately are elected. We begin with an overview of what they already know-usually of those topics that have been mentioned. I am quick to underscore that what they read in the paper may make it sound easy, but the homework in advance of the meeting is very time consuming. I warn them of the email or phone call from the superintendent briefing on an 'unusual' event in one of the schools; the angry phone call from a parent when their child wasn't selected for a role in the play. 

Indeed, the concepts can be dense and an agenda can include multiple exhibits with artifacts that can easily run a couple of hundred pages. Yes, the meeting is where the decisions are made. But I can promise you that the run up to the final decision is often months in the making. It includes discussion at the board table, requests for additional information, consideration of alternatives, and sometimes outside expertise. By the time a resolution is called up for a vote, it is pretty anti-climatic. Take for example our budget. When the board took final action on the budget resolution it was merely a board member making a motion for consideration that was subsequently seconded. A vote was called and the resolution adopted. This whole evolution was over in moments. Yet the lead up to that vote was months in the making. In fact, you can trace the roots of our budget work back to early November. 

While mechanically, the meeting is where the work gets done, it merely is the vehicle in which to do that work. You see, the role of the school board is governance of the school district. They set the vision for the district and establish long-term goals for student achievement and district growth. This includes setting policies dealing with curriculum standards, safety protocols, and even determining how many credits are required in order to graduate from high school. As mentioned above, the board recently completed their most important task of a school year: setting the annual budget. A total budget for fiscal year 2027 that is expected to top $16.7 million. A huge responsibility indeed! Once the board has set that vision, adopted the policy, and certified the budget-they have in essence given me my marching orders: to execute on those directives. 

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about school board members is that they are locally elected volunteers. That's right, they are not being paid. In fact, service on the school board is the only elected office in Iowa that does not come with some sort of compensation. They are our neighbors, business owners, and parents who choose to spend their free time tackling some of the toughest challenges we face in education. They engage in heated debates, make difficult decisions about resources, and act as a bridge between the community and the classroom. 

When it come to governmental service, there is perhaps no greater impact to what happens in your day to day life than what happens at the local level. Healthy schools create healthy communities. This month, let's take a moment to honor those who have give their time in service to sit in those board chairs. Their commitment to our children's education is a commitment to the future for us all. 

In Defense of the System

As we celebrate teacher appreciation week, a time traditionally reserved for gratitude, it is difficult to ignore the growing disconnect between the headlines and the hallways. The 5 o'clock news or latest Facebook post does not reflect the reality of what is happening inside our schools. While this week should be focused on the thousands of public servants who have dedicated their lives to serving our children, their actual work is often obscured by a thick fog of digital outrage and political rhetoric. We have found ourselves in a strange moment where the reality of the classroom is being overshadowed by viral 'ghost stories' and manufactured outrage. So during this teacher appreciation week, I encourage you to recognize the vital, grounded work they do every single day. 

I implore you to give very little credence to what you read on Facebook when it comes to what happens in public schools, the curriculum that is taught, or any other wild accusation that is levied. At the same time, I might suggest when candidates for political office make absurd claims about our schools, we take the opportunity to ask some clarifying and pointed questions about those allegations. We need specifics. And we need examples. The fact is this: The vast majority of these statements are made by folks whose own children don't even attend public schools. The only purpose [they seem to serve] is to provide a convenient foil for those working very hard at privatizing our educational system-and succeeding. 

I'm not sure where these claims are coming from. Perhaps there is some story that gets twisted out of proportion and spreads like wildfire on the 'socials'. By the time it reaches our ears it is so far from the truth that anyone who stops for just a second to think it through will realize it is balderdash. Consider this: Student 'A' asks a teacher to use the restroom and the teacher refuses. Nevermind whether or not the request was legitimate. Maybe it was, and the teacher should have allowed it; yet that isn't even the point. In any event, the student goes home and tells mom and dad, who may be rightfully upset. They call the school to sort it out. Or instead they post something on Facebook. It gets shared. It multiplies and begins to mutate, ever so slightly. Before you know it, the story has evolved into the truly bizarre and a superintendent in a school district two hundred miles from the epicenter gets a phone call wanting to know why they are allowing students to use litter boxes in lieu of the restroom. What?  

Something broke in our society post covid and I haven't quite been able to figure it out. The result has been some pretty significant paradigm shifts in the public education system. Now, I'll be the first to admit that change can be difficult and that it is sometimes necessary. But it should be based on reality as opposed to made up issues. I can remember taking a phone call following our re-opening after covid and being accused of teaching critical race theory in our schools. I've been in this business for 31 years and have seen a lot; but I literally had no idea what this person was talking about. Or what critical race theory even was. For the record (and for the one thousandth time), we do not teach that concept here or in any other public school that I am aware of in the state of Iowa. 

The latest iterations are more of the same with new twists; partly because, and I can only assume, we have an election coming up this fall. The themes include such claims that public schools have an obsession with, and gender focused agenda. The curriculum is riddled with marxist ideas. We are teaching kids to hate America. Again, these allegations are made by individuals that have no experience with public schools. Their kids go elsewhere. Is it because this type of manufactured outrage is what is needed to secure votes? Or is it perhaps an even more sinister attempt to further undermine our public education system in effort to funnel more money toward privatization?

Now then, at the same time we must admit that we are far from perfect. Have some schools 'painted outside the lines' when it comes to some of these issues? Yes. Is it conceivable that someone reached a bit too far in their application of what is just and right, perhaps imparting an opinion that is ideologically in conflict with local norms? Likely. Yet here is the problem. When we use these isolated 'one off' examples to indict an entire system it becomes problematic. The trouble of course is that it may not appear to be an isolated incident: because social media only amplifies the triggering event. 

It's a little bit offensive when such outlandish claims are made by people who quite frankly should know better, but don't. Because they don't have any real experience with the system. Claims that are meant to be incendiary and easily disproven. Allegations without merit which are purported to be so widespread that the entire system is guilty as charged. Not only is it offensive, it is demoralizing to the almost 40,000 public servants who have dedicated their professional lives to educating our youth in more that 1,300 public schools across the state. Teachers and administrators who Pledge Allegiance to the same flag as all their neighbors. Public school educators who, believe it or not have a key role to play when it comes to protecting this constitutional republic. After all, Thomas Jefferson believed that public education was the bedrock of a free society and once said, "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." 

So then, as we celebrate teacher appreciation week, I ask you to look past the digital noise and manufactured headlines. Instead, look at the dedicated professionals in our schools who show up every morning-not to push an agenda, but to solve problems, offer encouragement, and unlock the potential of the next generation. These public school teachers are the heartbeat of our community; they are the coaches, the mentors, and your neighbors who have chosen a life of service in the face of increasingly loud and unjustified criticism. If you want to know what's going in our our schools, don't check Facebook. Check with a teacher. Better yet, thank one. They are doing the hard and essential work of preserving the 'bedrock of a free society' that Jefferson envisioned, and they deserve our trust, our respect, and our gratitude. Not just this week, but every week.