Talk about being tone deaf!
At last night’s Richmond School Board meeting, citizens learned that three months was simply not enough time for the new school administration to produce a line-item budget.
But this may be the last thing that area parents and taxpayers are allowed to officially “learn” from our elected school board.
Yes, as hard as it is to believe, the board also voted in favor of a new, so-called “Communications Protocol” — anyone else would call it a gag order — that will govern the board’s future relations with the new schools administration, and itself.
You can read a summary here . Among the main planks of this new “protocol,” you’ll find this:
[School board reps will] maintain fidelity to your fellow board members, your board policies and governance team standards when communicating with the media.
In other words, board members are heretofore forbidden to speak to the press and to inform the public about matters that the school superintendent and fellow board members would declare to be inconvenient.
[Boy, former board rep and all-around firebrand Carol Wolf really spooked those folks, didn't she? She has a brand new blog — bookmark it here — and I bet we'll hear plenty from her about this particular bit of business.]
But here is what puzzles me: I thought that the Richmond School Board represented us, the people; I had no idea that a board member’s job was all about making the superintendent’s job easier or shielding her from bad news or breaking stories… or even to mollify other board members. With this new policy, the school board seems to be confirming that it exists only to parrot the status quo, and that it should throw away any thoughts that whistle-blowing might actually be a good thing that helps RPS, and the children.
And are you sitting down?
Our wonderful school board passed this egregious piece of “business” during…
wait for it…
All of this would be really, really funny if it were happening in some other city that isn’t ours. Wouldn’t it?