Executive Director's Report: Some of our most important work is in the legal arena

And we have four goals:

• Every school board will lead its community in preparing all students to succeed in a rapidly changing global society.

• Congress, state legislatures, the courts, and other decision makers will support policies and provide resources to strengthen public education and local school board governance.

• Americans will value and invest in public education, actively support their public schools, and understand the critical role of school boards as essential for the preservation of a democratic society.

• NSBA will be a creative organization that maintains a sound infrastructure, serves its members and customers in a fast and flexible manner, supports continuous improvement in its services and operations, and generates resources to support its mission through NSBA programs and activities.

These are big, hairy, audacious goals. But as one of my favorite authors, Jim Collins, says in Good to Great, “If you do not dream big, how will we ever become what we need to be?”

Our second goal, on advocacy, takes much of our resources. No one but NSBA can serve you at the federal level in Congress or in the courts.

Why can NSBA do this well? We are viewed as truly bipartisan, because we represent you, local school board members, whether you are Republicans or Democrats. We do not even have a political action committee, and our staff team is also bipartisan.

Our work in the courts is just as important. Our office of general counsel and the Council of School Attorneys (consisting of more than 3,000 lawyers who serve school districts) enable us to do two critical things: (1) We file friend-of-the-court briefs, known as amicus briefs, and (2) we focus our efforts on preventive law, which means we help school districts take appropriate actions so they will be less likely to end up in court.

An example of the type of work we do in the legal arena is reflected in a very important victory in the Supreme Court in Schaffer v. Weast last month. This pivotal case involved parents who sued the Montgomery County, Md., school system over the placement of their learning-disabled child.

The school district had done its homework and believed it could serve this child well. The parents disagreed and transferred him to a private school and then sued the district to recover the cost of the tuition, which is $20,000 a year.

Our position was that the burden of proof lay with the parents, who chose to go outside of the process -- and not with the school district. The Supreme Court agreed.

Our amicus brief, submitted with the Maryland Association of Boards of Education, clearly made an impression on the Supreme Court. We could see our writings reflected in the majority opinion.

Why is the Schaffer decision so important? The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act  is a crucial law. When the precursor to this law was enacted 30 years ago, it opened up educational opportunities to a population that had not been well served. In fact, children with disabilities were often hidden from view, not to mention hidden from school.

Over time, the special education law has been hugely successful in meeting these children’s needs. But it has also been misused by some parents who simply do not want their child in a public school and seek to gain public dollars so they can enroll their child in a private school.

I should note that if a private school is the only setting in which the child can be served, that is fine. But if parents abuse the system to get a free ride in a private school, that is simply wrong.

So Schaffer v. Weast is an important victory for all of public education.

NSBA did not win this case alone. We had lots of help from seven state school boards associations. Because the case involved the Montgomery County school district, we filed our brief with the Maryland Association of Boards of Education.

And because the Virginia attorney general filed an amicus brief on behalf of the parents, the Virginia School Boards Association (VSBA) got on board to show the Supreme Court that the state’s attorney general did not represent the views of the state’s school leaders.

With VSBA leading the way, a second brief was filed representing the Virginia, Minnesota, Texas, Connecticut, Kansas, and Illinois school boards associations supporting the position of Montgomery County Public Schools.

In addition, the Council of School Attorneys (COSA), a key part of the NSBA family, lent monumental support to this effort. Our brief was drafted on a pro bono basis by Les Stellman and two of his colleagues from the firm of Hodes, Ulman, Pessin & Katz. The draft was then reviewed by other COSA members who are experts on special education law.

Stellman helped the Montgomery County school district’s attorney prepare for the Supreme Court in a “moot court” practice session, another service NSBA provides in the cases we support.

The result of this effort, a 6-2 decision in favor of the school district, was an affirmation that, when a parent challenges an IEP (individual education program) developed for a child with disabilities, the burden of proof lies with the parents.

As Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast said at the press conference following the decision, this “is a victory for special education teachers in Montgomery County and across the nation who work hard every day to provide the best possible education for students with disabilities.”

“We want and need our parents to work closely with our educational teams because we all have the same goal -- to provide the right education for children with special needs,” Weast says. “Our concern with this case was that parents would reject this partnership and our special education teachers and other professionals would become targets for attorneys because parents would have no reason not to simply challenge everything, instead of working with us.”

The victory in this case also speaks to the importance of collaboration and how true power comes from the concept of a federation. It illustrates how NSBA is more powerful because of the close ties we have with the state school boards associations.

We are united, energetic, focused on student achievement, and able to reach out to our communities through out relationships with the state associations and our National Affiliates. You are part of a powerful organization called NSBA.