Primaries offer opportunities for public education advocates

By Joetta Sack-Min

Instead, several hundred showed up -- far more than expected. “There was a blizzard like you wouldn’t believe and more people showed up than we had room,” Tormey recalled. “People were sitting outside of the ballroom in the lobby to hear him speak. Many people turned around because of the lack of space.”

The excitement of the 2008 election has brought out more voters and elicited more interest than in past years.

The drawn-out primary season also gives school board members and administrators a better opportunity to have a say in the candidates’ platforms. And it’s a critical time for education, as the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act is being debated in Congress and economic issues could profoundly affect school budgets in coming years.

“School board members should be listening to what the candidates are saying but also should ask them questions about the most controversial areas -- first and foremost is No Child Left Behind,” said Freeman Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who spoke at NSBA’s annual Federal Relations Network Conference Feb. 2.

“The first thing school board members could be asking is about candidates’ understanding of the law and their positions on federal policies,” Hrabowki suggested. “Then listen to see if they are speaking with any specificity.”

Many school leaders are concerned that the candidates are paying less attention to education than other issues, such as the economy, Iraq war, immigration, and health care. That’s where school board members’ activism could make a difference.

“Education really has not been injected sufficiently into the debate,” said Michael Resnick, NSBA’s associate executive director for advocacy. However, “education can rise higher if people elevate it, and school board members clearly have a platform to reach the public with authority.”

Many school board members are working on campaigns and have contributed to their party platforms. Lee Ann Grimley, president of the Spring­ville, Iowa, school board, recently served as the secretary for her local GOP caucus. Like other states with caucuses, in each Iowa community politically like-minded residents came together to discuss their priorities, and those issues were sent to leaders at the county and then state levels to create a platform.

The process “was really interesting, because you don’t often sit in a room with friends and neighbors and talk about politics,” Grimley said.

In deciding whom to support, Grimley got advice from her daughter, a high school student who works as a page in the state legislature. She had an opportunity to meet nearly all of the candidates and was “really impressed with John McCain, because he was the first person to ask for her support, and the other people kind of demanded it,” Grimley said.

Hrabowski recommends that school leaders join forces with other local elected officials to gain access to the candidates or key staff members.

School board members can provide valuable information to candidates by telling them about the real-life, day-to-day issues that their schools are facing, such as NCLB, the achievement gap, international competitiveness, and immigration, he noted.

“What I see is a need for educators to be speaking with one voice about these issues,” he said. “And as educators, they need to be talking about the important role educators play in this country.”

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