School Board Forums for All of Des Moines

On Saturday, June 2, I joined about 40 other concerned residents of Des
Moines at the first of 10 scheduled forums on school issues. I attended
because I have argued that it is just as important for small, women-owned
businesses to have a properly educated workforce as it is for any of the
large insurance or manufacturing companies in the area. As a person without
children in the school system and without school employees in my circle of
friends, I had not been aware of many issues that were raised at the forum.

The forum was structured around four broad topics:

• priorities for emphasis in school,
• resource allocations,
• equity for individual success, and
• communication.

Within those topics, attendees at the forum were asked to
answer specific questions relating to why respondents to surveys answered
the way they did. Many of the attendees choose to answer by tearing down the
statistical validity of the surveys based on the phrasing of questions, the
number of people responding, and the amount of background information known
by the respondents. For example, one item selected by the forum presenter
was the willingness of parents/voters to pay higher taxes to ensure programs
are maintained. Professional poll takers have noted that this type of
question often results in a majority of respondents answering favorably.
However, when more detailed questions are asked, such as how much more would
be paid and what would be saved, the number of favorable responses drops,
sometimes significantly.

Three school board members were also in attendance at the forum and board
members will be at the next nine forums. The board members kept stressing
that things were changing and that the board would be more communicative and
open. Several attendees noted that they had heard that before and that as
volunteers on assorted advisory groups over the years, their input was heard
then ignored. The way the forum was structured, the board members could do
whatever they want and claim that they were responding to the public’s
wishes.

Attendees raised specific concerns based on their own experiences and needs.
These included: offering more arts education to develop a creative
workforce, upgrading and maintaining buildings more equitably, purchasing of
textbooks and/or electronic equipment, putting school board meetings on the
Internet for viewing and running repeats of the meetings on local cable TV,
having the local daily paper print a school board column, spending money on
gifted students versus spending money on the underprivileged, disciplining
disruptive students, holding the school board accountable for how it spends
tax money, and several more topics. Perhaps the scariest comment came from a
woman who asked, if Des Moines schools are considered among the best in the
nation and there are still all of these problems in the school system, then
just how poorly are the rest of the schools in America faring?

Guest Author: M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.

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