NSBA President: Speaking with one clear voice

In retrospect, I wonder if any child could turn down a parent who offers a combination of cold, hard cash and the right to live in blissful sloth.

Anyway, the next time I entered one of the children’s sanctuaries, I encountered a sea of unwashed clothing mixed with damp towels interspersed with apple cores and half-eaten crackers. And then I kicked the overflowing wastebasket. Hard enough to break my big toe.

Needless to say, I rose to new heights of eloquence in communicating my definition of a clean room. Of all the perils faced by school boards, the most disconcerting could well be the art of communication. After all, every board member is not only a public servant, bound by legally defined responsibilities, but also a private citizen, free to participate in the ordinary, day-to-day exchange of ideas.

And in juggling those dual roles, the unwary board member may discover a painful truth: The innocent misstatement of a board position has the potential to alienate the public, confuse school employees, and damage the credibility of the school board, thereby diminishing the school’s effectiveness in educating students.

The consequences of miscommunication are serious.

Many boards deal with this problem by designating one or two individuals as official spokespersons. This solution protects individual board members who might otherwise be pressured into speaking without having enough facts at hand. It also gives the media a consistent source of information and, in case of emergency, ensures the accuracy of public statements.

However, the finest spokes­person still cannot shelter the rest of the board from those everyday situations that cry out for an articulate advocacy of high-quality education.

And therein lies the challenge. In this time of burgeoning public and political criticism of the schools, each board member needs to engage in the dialogue of democracy, reach agreement on the board’s core message about education, and then communicate that message with one clear voice.

It isn’t easy to bring board members with deep differences to a point of agreement on substantive issues -- let alone get them to embark on the public dissemination of a core message.

Some would be tempted to construe the call to speak with one voice as a demand for dishonesty. That would be unfair.

This call is based, not on the denial of real differences, but on the strength built by wrestling through those differences in all of their complexity and, in the process, affirming a shared commitment to the education of the community’s children.

There is a real paradox in the notion that autonomous individuals representing diverse constituencies ought to be searching out those common truths that all can embrace. But for those of us entrusted with governance of the public schools, there is no responsible alternative.