Welcome school board members - now get ready to get blasted

School board members were elected in communities throughout the Hi-Line last week.

There is something very American about school elections. It’s a time when voters — though usually far too few — go to the polls to decide on policy for the two things they care about the most in the world — their children and their money.

In the Havre district we had an interesting race in which five qualified candidates for three seats discussed the issues and stated their positions on the future of educational issues. It was reassuring to see so many fine candidates. In recent years, there has been no contest, and some years there haven’t been enough candidates to fill all the seats.

If the number of candidates is a sign of public interest in the school system, Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation ought to be celebrating. Eighteen people ran for two open seats on the Rocky Boy school board.

The people who step forward to serve on school boards are, in my mind, the finest of public servants. Most public officials are underpaid, but school board members are the only ones who serve with no pay.

My father served on the school board back home and survived all the controversies that face small town school districts. People wanted teachers fired, taxes lowered, sports teams to win and books banned from the libraries.

The school board denied tenure to a popular teacher and pickets protested the move. School board members said they couldn’t comment. Weeks later, the teacher was arrested for molesting a student.

While shopping, my mother was unbraided for high taxes. With sarcasm dripping from her voice — she thought — she told the protester that she wouldn’t know about that: school board members were exempt from paying taxes. The sarcasm wasn’t obvious. The protester went to other befuddled board members demanding that the tax exemption be ended.

Soon the new board members will be sworn in, and as the old saying goes, they will soon be sworn at.

Years ago, a school board president I covered gave a speech to newcomers about what they could expect on the board.

To paraphrase, she warned them that newly elected board members would face the common problem — more good ideas than money.

They would have to cut programs they wished they could fund. They would have to deny tenure to teachers they liked personally. They would have to raise taxes on overburdened property owners. They would have to uphold disciplinary action against students whose parents were friends.

They could expect to be criticized for just about everything. Sometimes they would be attacked at school board meetings, but more often while they were shopping, walking down the street, eating at McDonald’s or going to a basketball game.

“You’ll wonder if it is all worth it,” she warned.

Then, she said, they will attend graduation ceremonies, and they will be touched.

Maybe they will see a graduate in a wheelchair and think of the efforts the board undertook to make the school handicapped-accessible. Or they will see a Special Olympian and they will think of the programs they funded for people with disabilities, or maybe a student who got a music scholarship to college for her work in the school choir they defended from the budget ax.

They will see happy graduates lined up, thankful for their education and looking forward to their bright futures.

And the board members will think that they in some small way played a part in the successes. They will feel a warm glow and maybe shed a tear. They will realize that it was all worth it.

Then on the way home, they will hear someone complain about something the school board did.

The complaint will be pretty small stuff, all things considered.

It was all worth it.

(John Kelleher is managing editor of the Havre Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected], 406-265-6795, ext. 17, or 406-390-0798.)