HB 1130 is mostly about making sure that school boards get a full hammering from the public-- each public member in attendance must be given at least three minutes to speak, while adding restrictions for non-physical meetings--but Senator Jeff Raatz has decided to add another wrinkle.
A section of Indiana law says that an employee of a school district cannot serve on the school board for that district, which is a sensible and common rule. Raatz proposes to add just a few words to that
Where the law now ends with "may not be a member of the governing board of the school corporation," Raatz proposes to add the words "or any other school corporation."
So no teacher (or any other school employee) could serve on any school board anywhere in the state. The reasoning behind this is... well, I don't know. School district employees might know too much about how school districts work? The voters can't be trusted to make the right choice? Teacher board members will be too sympathetic to teachers and their damned unions? Or just one more legislative opportunity to give public schools and the people who work there a big slap in the face.
That would be fine if they included vendors who want to do business with the school district, real estate agents who want to buy or sell to them, or those with connections to foundations pushing the privatization agenda.
ReplyDeleteBut then who would want the job?
At one of my community college districts, we got a K-12 teacher on our board of trustees.
Would that be barred too?