Democracy and Independent Schools.

While working on the revisions of our bylaws, we've struggled to develop a workable system for electing our leadership that balances the need for vetting and guided, responsible leadership, on the one hand, and desire for democracy and checks and balances on the other.

Our present bylaws try to thread the needle by providing for a Nominating Committee that selects our Board. The Board then "approves" the slate of officers and trustees, and then submits it for another vote to our "Members" which are defined as our parents and our Trustees. The bylaws then provide another possible check, in that anyone can run to be a Trustee, but there is no election for officers; officers are selected solely by the Nominating Committee and the Board.

The self-appointed arbiters of school management wisdom, ISM, PEJE, and the Independent Schools Association of the Central States, opine that democracy is bad, and that under no circumstances should the members or parents vote for anything. Instead, the Board itself should determine the strategic direction of the school; the Board, and not the parents, should select future Boards. There are a variety of schools that do this, and we are considering this at Kadima. Many Boards fear the outsider who, with no experience gets a mob charged up and takes over the school, only to run it into the ground. Thus, there is a desire to eliminate the possibility entirely by ensuring that the Board--and not the people with the pitchforks--determine the school's leadership.

Yet, this level of control cuts against my democratic instincts; I am a believer in democracy and in elections. I don't shy away from debate (perhaps that's because I am a lawyer) and I love politics (there was a time when I knew the names of all 100 Senators). I also think that Nominating Committees and Board can become insular and isolated and stale. When this happens, there ought to be a mechanism for an outsider to come and get elected through some sort of democratic process. Yet, paradoxically, most parents have no desire to vote on the Board and rarely turn up for annual meetings. Indeed, at least one school president told me that when they eliminated the voting rights of their parents, no one protested at all. Like virtually every school, most parents don't come to the annual meeting, so they really were not missing anything.

Moreover, ISM argues that the Board should be more like a business board, namely, it is a strategic Board, and not a representative Board. In other words, the Board should focus on strategic planning and management, and not upon politics--even if it is interesting.

The bylaws committee is still sorting through this issue. My position is evolving on this; I initially believed that we should have as much democracy as possible; however, as I consider all the realities, I recognize that this may not be the wisest course for operating an independent school. At the end of the day, whoever is on the Board must think strategically and in the school's best interests; otherwise, the school will simply not succeed. In addition, I've learned that school governance can be a strange beast; having experienced people at the helm--even if they are not most political people--is probably best.

It's interesting stuff...at least to me.