Monday, November 13, 2010
Horry County Schools
District Office
Conway, S. C.
Members of the Board:
I addressed the Horry County Board in October for the first time since my 2007 appeal for the board to study my extensive research on Policy Governance and to return to traditional governance. I exited TERI that school year, became an at-will employee, and announced to some board members and others my intention of giving up educational politics, for I had fought the good fight since the early nineties. My silence for the next three years was not out of fear of negative consequences or losing my job, since I was at-will, but because I thought I had said all I needed to say about 4 x 4 block scheduling, strategic planning, the United States history standards, professional e-mail correspondence, teacher free speech issues, and board governance. Also, I was craving more time for myself and family. After reading Issac Bailey’s recent column about teachers being afraid to speak out and thinking about our monetary shortfall, my conscience compelled me to reenter the public arena. Being selfish, I had failed in thinking that one should ever give up his citizenship responsibilities. How dare I go into my classes and teach my students that a republic depends on the active voice of its citizens, and I remain silent! Now is the time for all good citizens to come to the aid of their district and urge a return to traditional governance.
We the People of Horry County, in order to form a more perfect school district, establish participation, insure direct input, provide for common knowledge, promote fiscal responsibility, and secure the principles of representative government for public education, do ordain and reestablish traditional governance in Horry County Schools. This should be our preamble.
In the year 2000, the Horry County Board of Education voted to replace traditional governance with a radical system of governance that was NOT designed for the public sector but was intended for the private sector and the corporate world. Created in the late seventies by a clinical psychologist with no credentials in representative government or law, John Carver’s trademarked Policy Governance was introduced to public education in the nineties. Used in less than 1 % of the roughly 15,000 school districts nationwide, variant forms exist, but all, including our former board governance and now coherent governance, create policy boards which deprive taxpaying citizens of direct influence on philosophical and monetary decisions by transferring means decisions to superintendents of education who are non-elected and who represent no one. Boards design results or ends policies and focus on student achievement, thereby diminishing the influence of their constituents’ voices. The ends do not justify the means.
Of course, the board should listen to professional recommendations from administration, but deference to professionals undermines the very nature of our constitutionally-established school district and the principle of representative government. Citizens should play equal and vital roles.
Citizens should be able to have significant, direct input into curriculum, programs, and various means initiatives of a school district. This can only happen through traditional governance. Standing committees and subcommittees give citizens greater opportunities to influence their duly elected board representatives who must become more intimately involved with all aspects of the district’s operation. The board need not micromanage day-to-day operations and bother itself with such mundane decisions as choosing the color of carpet, but major means decisions should be made by the board, not the superintendent, and carried out by the district administration.
All major means issues should be in the public arena with ample time for discussion and debate before final implementation, whether it be the need to emphasize the fundamentals of grammar at every grade level or the purchase of a computerized testing program. Philosophical and monetary decisions belong with the taxpaying public, through their board representatives, not with non-elected employees of the board.
You have the authority to reinstate traditional governance.We would continue to have our challenges under tradtional governance, but they would be all of our challenges.
Sincerely yours,
Bobby Chandler
722 Pine Drive
Surfside Beach, S. C. 29575
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