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I'm watching the Board of Supervisors public hearing tonight, and listening to the many speakers on school issues. Those poor Supervisors. No wonder they speak to their School Board counterparts with an underlying tone of "what the heck are you guys doing over there?"
Frankly my fellow citizens, the Public Hearing is one of the least effective ways to have your voice heard. I'll use this post to give you my take on how to get your issue before the Board.
With the new School Board and the new year, we start fresh with the list of issues to consider over the course of this year. This comes after an election and budget-cycle induced hiatus of committee work over the past three months. Now, new committee chairs have been assigned, new meeting times are being negotiated and a new year's set of agendas are being filled. If you have an issue that you want the School Board to consider this year, this is a good time to bring it forward.
The list of committee assignments is on the LCPS website for your information, but it's helpful to know that for most citizens it's enough to contact your own representative, who will usually bring issues forward on behalf of their constituents.
As you are deciding who to call, here are some tips from my experience, in no particular order except the first one:
- Most important: Exhaust your other options first, particularly when it comes to individual complaints. Problem with the class? Talk to the teacher. Problem with the teacher? Talk to the principal. Problem with the principal? Talk to the Superintendent. Still no luck? Now try your Board member.
- Know your stuff. Information is the coin of the realm. Provide your representative with written information to work from and you'll give the issue a big head start.
- Learn the reasons against your argument as well as your own and treat them with respect. Yours is not the only side to the story, your School Board member knows this.
- Have personal contact with your School Board rep. We are not so innundated by calls and emails that yours will get lost in the shuffle (except perhaps when it pertains to a boundary issue and they come in by the hundred). Trying to contact every member is not as effective as contacting two: the member from your district, and At-Large member Tom Reed. Letting your representative know that you live in their district gives them a chance to be your advocate. Too many times I see emails with a name and a phone number addressed to every board member. With no indication whose district it's in, it's easy enough to not feel personal responsibility to respond.
- Get some people together who agree with you. Work together, even if you just coordinate by email. You don't need a movement of hundreds, but it helps to show that there is broader appeal than one person.
- Baby steps. Don't ask for district-wide mandates, because it just doesn't work that way in most cases. Principals in Loudoun have tremendous autonomy, and this can work for or against you. Find one who thinks your idea is a good one and try to create a successful pilot program in a single school before trying to take the County by storm.
- Government is about legwork. Effective people know that the big public meetings with the dais and the microphones are just the tip of the iceberg, the showpiece. Want to really hear the meat of the discussion? Go to a committee meeting. Want to really advance your issue? Offer to help with the research and coordination. Join an advisory committee. Don't forget to help other people with their issues too.
- Understand how your issue fits in with others. It's all a big interconnected web and you can't pull one string without affecting the rest. For instance, if you want to alter the bus schedules in your area, understand the effect this will have on the budget, on traffic flow, on school schedules and on kids. Instead of saying "I understand this will have some effect on the transportation budget," take the time to find out and then write "I understand that an additional bus and driver will cost the district $57,000 per year." (I pulled that number out of the air, don't quote me on it.) If you don't know the answer, call and ask how you find out. If someone asks why, be honest and explain to them that you're interested in promoting a change and want to know the ins and outs.
- Finally, follow up. With the passage of time some issues will rise to the surface and stay there on their own and some need to be nudged back up again. Write and call your member to remind them if you're waiting for a response or some action.
I would welcome comments on the experience others have had, either doing things similar to what I listed here or going against this advice.
7 Comments:
Thanks for the info - if you could advocate that the rest of the school board relay their thoughts and activities like you do via blogging, that would also help in the dialogue. It's quite refreshing, and another good forum to get questions answered and elicit support from similar-minded individuals, without having to make the traffic-congested drive to Leesburg.
Such a great post. You lay out how your constituents can be more effective advocates for their own causes. You have created quite a resource with your blog.
Some ideas require research that citizens can't get just by picking up the phone. School administrators might jump to satisfy the request of a board member but they don't do that for a parent with a idea they oppose.
Asking anyone with a suggestion for how to improve public education to first become a politician and build a coalition also seems over the top. If people could do that they'd have your job and be implementing policy themselves. Just because someone isn't an extrovert or doesn't have a political base doesn't mean their concerns or ideas should be dismissed.
[I'll echo the appreciation for this blog and for getting the budget materials online.]
Regarding the research, it is true that it isn't possible for Joe or Jane Citizen to get all of the information that comes at the request of a Board member. It would be entirely impractical for the LCPS Administration to function as the research department for the public at large. I do think that in general people at LCPS want to be helpful. It is completely fair to ask your Board member to find out information for you as well, but expect them to act as a filter and not just a lever.
As for becoming a politician and building a coalition, again it is true that a good idea is a good idea and shouldn't need a networked extrovert to be heard. Nonetheless the truth is that 20 people coming forward are going to make a bigger impression than one. The points I laid out were not minimum requirements for advocacy, they were what you can do above and beyond an email to your representative, and I suspect that they are fairly universal for local government anywhere.
Sorry but doesn't it strike you as odd that it takes such a herculian effort to make every little change (even to get the attention of a SB member)? What you are saying is if you can't attend committee meetings, organize other citizens to support your idea, put up the "big show" during public comment, etc. then your idea is not good enough for serious consideration.
And I know that the SB member can't handle and evaluate every idea. Frankly, if staff were more open to actually changing and improving the way things are done, we the citizens could trust them to honestly evaluate and promote our ideas. As it stands, every change to the system will almost certainly have to overcome the administration's attempts to derail it. THAT is the reason every idea has to be vetted through the process you outlined and THAT is the reason nothing new is ever really done at LCPS.
Having locked horns several times with Dr. Hatrick and staff and having done EXACTLY what you outline several times (successfully) I know of what I speak.
I'm with Eric. It seems we are optimizing for people that have been driven to react in a vigorous way.
If transparency was as vigorous, if the process was more amenable to taxpayers, the distance between spender and payer would diminish.
I have been sending my kids for a couple of years now and I feel like the levels and standards are diminishing with the admisnstrative staff. They are not at all required to be friendly and respectful to everyone who enters. There are some of us who spend long hours voulunteering and still do not get any respect from the school administration. They teach our children that they should respect self others and the school but they dont seem to apply the same tools to themselves. SAD is it not?
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