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Traditionally, and the way the system was set up, the boards did rule the roost. The final say in event of a dispute, though, rests with the voters who elect the members. It is part of government of, for, and by the people. I'm not sure what the real purpose of having school boards is, either.
The question that nearly always comes up in these discussions is, "Who is in charge?" Many say the real authorities are the State Boards of Education. Others feel the Universities make the decisions. Now, we get political, which is just where we didn't want to go.
I saw the videos of the dictatorial, intransigent school boards and administrators, treating the parents like dirt. I also saw parents who couldn't seem to control themselves. As the ol' drill sergeant said, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."
It does not seem feasible to hold an election every time a “dispute” comes up. That is what the purpose of a board is, to serve as a proxy for the voters since getting everyone’s input for every decision is a recipe for not getting anything done.
It may not be a perfect reflection of public opinion every time, but compromises have to be made due to the constraints of nature. To offset this imperfection, we have periodic elections where the board members can be voted in or out. I have not heard of a better alternative.
Republicans are politicizing school board races, including in Ohio.
<<Even former Vice President Mike Pence has gotten into the game, taking a moment during a campaign rally in Ohio on Saturday to urge voters to support conservative school board candidates in Tuesday’s election....
In Ohio, former state Republican chair Jane Timken has taken time from her campaign for the U.S. Senate to offer guidance and funding totaling more than $40,000 to more than 40 conservative candidates in hyperlocal school board races.
“We are helping them not just financially, but my team is knocking doors and making calls with them,” said Timken, who said she completed a critical race theory “listening tour” that exposed cases of children being “indoctrinated with leftist policies.”>>
Combined with threats and harassment, the most qualified school board candidates likely no longer will be willing to offer their time as a public service.
Sadly, Republicans largely are pro-voucher (anti-public school), anti-teacher, anti-masking and anti-vaccine mask mandate and therefore pro COVID transmission and long COVID sequelae, and anti-history (eager to abolish any discussions of Jim Crow, racial massacres, and to promote the Confederacy and argue that slavery wasn't the cause of the Civil War). Just as Republicans have fractured other public institutions (such as Congress), they now have set their sights on public education.
Opponents of mask mandates and critical race theory apparently lost their bids for the school board in Chagrin Falls, but it appears they may have won election in North Royalton.
Surprisingly, it's not clear at the North Royalton School website if the district has a mask mandate, but there is an excellent COVID dashboard. I wonder if the two new board members will maintain transparency and keep the COVID dashboard. If an existing North Royalton mask mandate is eliminated, it's likely COVID infection rates will increase, but the rate of increase will dependent on vaccination rates. The NR dashboard indicates that the COVID infections are highest in the elementary school, where students are not vaccinated.
Republicans are politicizing school board races, including in Ohio..
That's true. By the same token, Democrats have politicized public education, television, media, immigration, race relations, morality, monetary policy, energy, foreign affairs, the military, higher education, taxation, and just about every other business or activity we have been lazy enough to permit them to horn in on and take over.
That's true. By the same token, Democrats have politicized public education, television, media, immigration, race relations, morality, monetary policy, energy, foreign affairs, the military, higher education, taxation, and just about every other business or activity we have been lazy enough to permit them to horn in on and take over.
Methinks you are largely confusing Democrats with Republicans. E.g., "critical race theory" never was an issue in most Ohio school districts, and even today is not something being taught anywhere in Ohio based on anything that I've read. Do you have any examples of critical race theory as it applies in Ohio schools anywhere???
Candidates supporting mask mandates, progressive curriculum fare well in school board races
<<For all the hysteria and headlines, election results from school board races across Northeast Ohio showed voters overwhelmingly supported candidates who supported mask mandates and progressive curriculum changes....
Of 156 Northeast Ohio school board candidates Scene reviewed, 67 were definitively pro-mask and pro-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, with 46 winning their races and 21 losing.
Andrey Stojic, a Cleveland Clinic neurologist and first-time candidate who supports Social and Emotional Learning and mask mandates, won the Bay Village school board race with 3,019 votes, more than received by any other candidate, including incumbents.
Three pro-mask/pro-DEI supporters swept the Chagrin Falls School board races, handing defeat to all four anti-mask/anti-DEI candidates. Elections in Bay Village, Cleveland Heights, Mayfield, Nordonia, and Eastlake ended similarly, with pro-mask/pro-DEI candidates sweeping the majority of, or all, available seats.
Candidates who were definitively against mask mandates and DEI won 11 races and lost 25.>>
Uh, OH! At least some of the anti-mask school board candidates also oppose comprehensive sex education. Ignorance about sexual matters could impair student health and mental well-being and result in bad choices later in life.
<<Kilbane and Stovcik say they oppose the teaching of critical race theory in the district’s classroom, are anti-comprehensive sex education and anti-masking. Both were supported by Ohio Value Voters, a conservative group that shares those viewpoints.>>
I wonder if election of such school board members will impact the willingness of some persons to purchase homes in these communities and perhaps more importantly, the decision of better teaching candidates to look elsewhere for employment.
These races are officially nonpartisan, but I absolutely made sure to do my research and vote for conservative candidates in my suburb for the BOE, township trustees and City Council. Clearly, I'm not the only one. Council is 6-1 GOP, as is the mayor, and all six BOE members not counting the superintendent are Republican.
Conservatives swept the three board seats and two township trustee seats last week and won three of four open spots on Council.
I moved out of an increasingly blue county, Franklin, into a reliably red county in Fairfield this summer. I vote in my interests and those of my community, county and beyond. Other people do it. Don't see why I shouldn't. I don't want the craziness in some of these other areas to pop up here.
These races are officially nonpartisan, but I absolutely made sure to do my research and vote for conservative candidates in my suburb for the BOE, township trustees and City Council. Clearly, I'm not the only one. Council is 6-1 GOP, as is the mayor, and all six BOE members not counting the superintendent are Republican.
Conservatives swept the three board seats and two township trustee seats last week and won three of four open spots on Council.
I moved out of an increasingly blue county, Franklin, into a reliably red county in Fairfield this summer. I vote in my interests and those of my community, county and beyond. Other people do it. Don't see why I shouldn't. I don't want the craziness in some of these other areas to pop up here.
What's crazy is voting for candidates opposed to school mask mandates amid a Delta COVID infection surge, and while vaccination rates among children are low, and vaccinations not even available for school children under 12-years-old until the last few days.
One study shows COVID outbreaks were 3.5 times more likely in schools without mask mandates, according to this Arizona study. As in Ohio, several districts that started the school year without mask mandates decided to impose them after reporting a high level of COVID cases.
Do school boards in Fairfield County ever consider long COVID sequelae? Do they understand that COVID viruses may never leave the body, and that long COVID may emerge weeks after infection? Obviously, we don't know yet how a COVID infection as a child may impact health as an adult, but certainly this is a problematic concern for many viruses. Why not the COVID virus?
Is one of your "interests" increased COVID transmission among school children???
Out of curiosity, I checked both the school systems in Ohio my kids attended. Sensibly, neither have mask mandates, except while riding the bus. They let parents decide what is best for their own children. What a concept.
I have lived in a place which chose to wipe out the entire school board and replace the board members with parents of current students. I don’t remember what the issues were at the time, but I do know when parents get their dander up, action can and does happen.
Depends on what kind of parents we are talking about. The majority or the minority. Seems like parenting mindset of the minority is the winning mindset over the majority these days. A vast majority of parents have not retained the parenting wisdom they were taught, and constantly argue with their own parents and grandparents about what is best for the child. This "rebellion" mindset is a losing position. If history has shown us anything it's that with each new generation, some key elements of parenting are lost in the transition. One thing I've noticed is that previous generations had more toughness and grit than the generation that came after it. It's not nostalgia, it's just facts.
These days a majority (not all, but a good majority) of kids it seems are taught that everyone has to be a winner, that trophies are for losers also, and that instant gratification is more important than earing something through hard work. Taking personal responsibility is a lost art. Examples I see are college kids coming into my work place with 4 year degrees and no experience telling hiring managers "well I'm not even going to accept the job unless it's 6 figures"...lol They waste their time with months of interviews before reality sets in and realize their college advisor was clueless. "oh don't worry about these 6 figure college loans, you'll pay it back the first 3 years on the job!" That's literally what they are being told. God forbid a parent tells them otherwise. Or some parent yelling at a coach because their kid who didn't practice as much as some other properly parented kid on the team (who did practice) didn't get a starting position. "It's not fair!!!" lol.....
When I was a kid you didn't get ice cream if you lost. Ice cream was for winners. These days kids get ice cream win or lose and this flawed way of parenting is commended by the clueless. This is the most simple example of them all and while it doesn't appear as a big deal on the surface, it is in fact a flawed way of thinking. When I was a kid even something a simple as video games was a competition. You wanted to play longer before handing off the controller to your friend or sibling for it to be their turn (watching is boring) and there was no such thing as an "easy mode". You played what you had and you were thankful for it. These days a majority of kids make their parents pay money to their favorite twitch streamer so that their kid can watch someone else play video games and their kid can live vicariously through someone else's enjoyment. This along with berating the game developers for making games too hard with no easy mode is the icing on the cake. You're literally siting your ass on a couch, moving your thumbs in releation to what you are viewing on a screen. The concept in and of itself is easy but they want to haggle the developers to make it even easier so the game is finished in a few hours that way they can complain that the game wasn't worth the $60 price tag. It's a joke.
When I was a kid, we concluded that the GOAT in a given sport was the one that performed the best on the highest stage. We watched guys like Michael Jordan who went 6/6 in the finals and never lost a single finals series, or even allowed a game 7. We watched players that stuck with their teams like Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Reggie Miller...win or lose. These guys were proud to be the leaders of their team and they didn't just jump ship from their team in their prime and combine with the other top players in the league to chase rings. Current generation is proud of players like Kevin Durant joining the GSW to form a super team and encourage such nonsense. This is one of many examples and it's laughable.
A child with solid parents these days that retained some of the wisdom of the parents before them instead of "going against the grain" of what they learned from their own parents are the ones that will excel vs the easy competition they are up against, seeing as how a majority of the competition is essentially non existent.
The kid these days who walks 10 houses down to the bus stop because he's not in a city where the bus driver picks up and drops off each and every kid right in front of the house will be tougher in the long run. God forbid a kid these days has to stand in the cold for a few minutes like we all did when we were kids. Nope, lets have 4x the number of busses that were available 20 years ago even though the number of students at the school hasn't changed.
All these parents complaining about how they can't get their kid a PS5 for Christmas and how it's not fair. It's OK to say NO and not support scalpers by paying double over retail because the prices are inflated due to simple supply and demand economics.
There is going to be plenty of man children with zero toughness and grit who are 20 now still living in their mom's basement when they are 40. Making a career out of youtube and ticktoc videos didn't pan out lol.
They along with their parents will be the first ones complaining about the few others they know of who worked all the non desirable jobs at a young age, went to college, and had proper parenting moved out of their parents house a long time ago, and they will attribute it to "a lucky break". Yep, whatever they need to tell themselves I guess. Maybe when I start to see more teens than parents cutting their lawns in my neighborhood it will be a sign of hope. When I was a kid, there wasn't a single house hold with an able bodied teen that didn't cut their lawn. It's funny as hell, the dad is cutting the grass while the teens are in the driveway playing basketball. Not all, but a vast majority. Dang I went a little off topic, but felt I had to vent about what I'm seeing these days and it's not good. Now I have to think about possible solutions to this problem. Maybe parenting 101 classes need to start being a thing lol....
Last edited by on3; 11-10-2021 at 05:01 PM..
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Candidates supporting mask mandates, progressive curriculum fare well in school board races
