What is the proper role of school boards and school board members? Those are questions CABL has been raising in public debate and discussion over the last several years. Why? Because while many people are familiar with school boards and have, perhaps, seen their local school board in action, a lot of citizens are probably unaware of the proper role of a school board.
In 2009, CABL began an effort in collaboration with others to promote school board reform legislation. It was a controversial issue at the time, but in recent years we have begun to see some real successes. During the 2010 legislative session, CABL and others worked to pass Act 720 to help curb the practice of micromanagement that allowed individual school board members to inappropriately interfere in personnel decisions that should be made by the superintendent.
The 2012 legislative session saw more victories. Act 1 went further and explicitly took hiring and other personnel decisions away from school boards and gave that authority directly to the superintendent where it belonged. In addition, Act 386 called for local option elections in every school district across the state to allow voters to decide if they want to impose a three-term limit of four years each on their local school board members.