Is the Minnesota School Boards Association’s proposed standards for school boards a conspiracy to promote the Profile of Learning and Minnesota graduation standards?.

Tuesday, October 24, 2000

Is the Minnesota School Boards Association’s proposed standards for school boards a conspiracy to promote the Profile of Learning and Minnesota graduation standards?

Are the proposed standards a duplication of the Austin Board of Education’s own goals?

Will adopting the association’s proposed standards be a capitulation by the Austin school board and turn it into a "propaganda tool?"

Just when one might think a special school board meeting Monday was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill discussion, board member Kathy Green thought otherwise.

School board members heard a report from board members Bev Nordby and Bruce Loveland and Superintendent Dr. James A. Hess on the state association’s proposed standards.

"It’s good. It sets high expectations for the school board," Nordby said.

Loveland said he was worried when "we don’t set high standards for ourselves" and that one of his worries was losing local control of education to the state.

Hess said the origin of the proposed standards came from the National School Boards Association and they were intended to be a "framework for schools to work toward common results."

He said a number of Minnesota school boards already have adopted the proposed standards, which, the superintendent emphasized, were intended to, in part, hold school boards accountable for their actions.

That’s when Green announced: "I’m opposed to the proposed standards."

Green also said, "We are held accountable to our constituents. They can elect us out of office if they are not satisfied."

Green suggested the proposed state association standards were a veiled attempt to elicit support for the Profile of Learning and graduation standards.

While Green said she is not opposed to high standards, she said the district should write its own.

"If we wrote our own standards, they would be very much like these," board member Larry Andersen said, waving a copy of the state association’s proposed standards.

Green countered by saying the district’s mission statement sufficed for a list of standards.

Amy J. Baskin, another school board member, said she did not see the proposed standards tying the Austin district into any kind of advocate for the Profiles of Learning and graduation standards legislation.

"It’s just this board agreeing … yes … we have to be held accountable," she said of the wording in the proposed standards.

Basking called the standards a "comprehensive checklist of the things we should be doing."

Another board member, Dick Lees, said he did not want to be "even remotely" linked to the Profiles of Learning and graduation standards, but, he joined Nordby, Loveland, Andersen and Baskin, as well as Hess, in supporting the proposed standards.

The board members went back and forth in examining the standards without Green budging from her opposition to them. By the time she said the Austin board’s adoption of the standards could be interpreted that "we could be used as a propaganda tool by the MSBA," she had convinced one school board member to change his mind.

"You’ve convinced me," Lees said.

That came after Green pointed out the state association routinely makes blanket generalizations that it has the support of all its member school districts, when it does not.

Even when David Simonson, school board president, praised the standards as "worthy goals" and said, "They touched on some things we as a school board should be doing" while adding that he saw no "ulterior motive" by the state association, Green remained opposed.

Nordby tried one last time to win Green’s support, saying, "As a new school board member, I need this."

When Simonson declared the discussion over and said a vote was in order, Nordby made a motion to adopt the proposed standards, only to be stopped by Hess.

"This is for discussion only," the superintendent said. "No action is required by the board at this time."

The board members will have until the next regular meeting to mull over the proposed standards and what Green said about them as well.