Staff Writer
Three meetings left for Charter Revision
It was agreed that a panacea was hard to find to fix the ills of education, but it was also agreed that the process of fixing those ills needs to start somewhere.
The City’s Charter Revision Commission hosted Dr. Bill Eddy at its weekly meeting Thursday at City Hall to listen to his experiences in trying to implement change in the Kansas City Missouri School District as a member of its School Board. Eddy is a former Dean of the University of Missouri Bloch School of Business and School Board member. The Charter Revision Commission requested Eddy to share his experiences with education to gain more information on how Cities are utilizing both elected and appointed school boards.
“One thing I found when I was elected to the school board was that we didn’t talk about the children too much,” said Eddy. “We talked about things like contracts, the budget and whether or not to name a gym floor after someone who had attended a school and had gone on to some fame.”
Prior to joining the School Board, one of the areas of research Eddy worked on at the University of Missouri was organizational change, and he told the Charter Revision Commission some of the ways that change could happen with the school district. Incremental change is a slow process that installs small changes at a steady rate and is “more likely to be accepted by the status quo.” Reinvention involves a restructure of governance that works from the top down. This technique was related to the change that General Motors recently underwent.
“They discovered that the way they had been operating wasn’t working anymore and that a slow, gradual change wouldn’t be the best course of action,” said Eddy. “They worked from the top down to make changes to improve their operation.”
The third technique for instituting change in the school system Eddy mentioned was having the State take over control of the school.
“And nobody wants to see that happen,” said Eddy.
Commission member Billy Catlin asked Eddy which technique he found the most useful.
“We tried incremental change and that didn’t work,” said Eddy, “so I’ve changed to the top down approach and reinvention.”
Commission member Ali Korman asked, knowing that Eddy is a proponent of an appointed school board, about the response of the public when its right to elect a school board is taken away.
“The stock answer is you are voting on a mayor and you hold the mayor accountable,” said Eddy. “In a school board-only election, very few people vote anyway, so who is actually electing the school board members? It’s a small section of the community.”
Eddy may be in favor of an appointed school board, but he did point out that it is not the only way to improve the educational system.
“Appointed boards are not a panacea,” said Eddy. “What they are is an opportunity for change.”
Change is also something Commission Member Jeanne Miller proposed to the Commission in the form of an amendment to the City’s Charter that was drafted by Steve Rohan of the City’s Office of General Counsel at Miller’s request. The amendment would place the City’s ethics code into the Charter and identify the City’s Ethics Commission as an independent body.
“My intention is not to duplicate any existing state law,” said Miller. “Rather, this is meant to be a supplement to any state law.”
The Commission will further discuss the amendment at its next meeting Feb. 11.
356-2466