Memo to School Boards: Parents & Students are Your Customers

One of the many problems with public school systems in America is the overwhelming sense of entitlement, along with an attitude of contempt towards questions of accountability. This is most often displayed by local School Boards and other administrators in charge of running these systems, where the teachers, students, and parents all become pawns.

Their utter disdain toward their customers (the parents who pay the taxes and the students who attend the schools) was made perfectly clear to me with an incident that recently occurred in my daughter Emily’s 10^th grade Civics class.

In early February, Emily informed us that Mr. Simmons her outstanding teacher was going to be transferred out of the Civics class in order to take over an Advanced Placement Government class, whose teacher had been in and out of school all year.

Never mind that the students in the Civics class like this teacher immensely, or that with just a few months left in the school year they would be stuck with a teacher who knew nothing about the class (and would have a lot of catch-up work to do on the syllabus). Never mind that there’s an end of course test which must be passed in order for the students to graduate, and someone new would have to prepare them for that test. By the way, Advanced Placement Government is an elective; with no end of course test.

All the School Board cared about was their ability to brag about how many students were passing Advanced Placement tests, which would make them look good in the rankings. Unfortunately, it would send the message to my daughter’s class that they are not as important as the students in the AP classes.

But the worst part was that the School Board and the principal were trying to push this through under a cloak of darkness. They weren’t going to inform the parents or the students. Luckily, Mr. Simmons spilled the beans to the class (obviously he didn’t want to go and knew what an uproar it would cause; especially when a maniac like me found out), which started the complaints rolling in.

Naturally, I wrote every member of the School Board and the principal a scathing email (as did other parents), and asked which of them would have the courage to get in front of the Civics class and explain to the students why they weren’t as important as the AP kids.

Now you want to hear something really scary? I received two replies. One from the principal and one from a Board member. The principal told me, “I am afraid that you have been misinformed. When and if there is a change in any teacher’s assignment, I will send a letter explaining what is happening and why it is happening.” The “Bored" member wrote, “Your assumptions are not accurate. I am not allowed due to the confidential nature of employment laws to elaborate except to say that this change did need to be made.”

So let’s recap; the principal says I’m wrong because no change has been made, but a member of the Board says I’m wrong because the change had to be made. Gee, I don’t have a PhD, but I’m usually pretty good about knowing when someone is full of crap (remember, I have teenagers).

Could you imagine what would happen to your business or company if you didn’t produce the desired results; made changes to your product or services without telling your clients; and better yet, if they did find out, you treated them like idiots and lied to them? But I guess when you’re a government monopoly accountable to no one, you can get away with it. Can you imagine what a good dose of competition would do to improve our public schools?

By the way, the good guys won! Mr. Simmons is staying in his 10^th grade Civics class. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.