Careers Shape Board Members: Doctors, Lawyers, Government Workers, Educators Help to Decide School Policies.

By Mark Guydish, The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Dec. 16–There are 99 Luzerne County residents overseeing 11 school districts where nearly 50,000 students are enrolled.

A few have experience in education and many bring other attributes to their unpaid positions as school directors: expertise in business, government and medicine, for example.

Two are attorneys and four are in accounting (one does both and is a college professor besides). At least 16 are employed by federal, state or local government in one way or another, from a courthouse tipstaff to a city police officer, from sewer authority employees to municipal managers (there are two of them).

Another eight are in the medical profession, from medical librarian to pediatrician, with two dentists, both on the same board (Dallas, which also has a nurse).At least seven are self-employed, depending on the definition, ranging from funeral home director to golf course owner. Thirteen are retired.

And yes, there are teachers, retired teachers, college professors and other past and present educators on local boards, though by law you can’t be on the board of the district in which you teach. While the public is often wary of educators on boards — a fear of letting children have the credit card, say — experts believe the concern is almost completely groundless.

When running for boards, candidates commonly tout their employment experience as a valuable asset to school governance. But is it? And how does it play out once they are on the board.

To get some answers, the Times Leader reviewed the employment of all 99 school board members in Luzerne County. As a uniform source of information, we used the Statement of Financial Interest forms they must file under the State Ethics Act., which require them to list an occupation.

Background shapes questions

Regular board meeting attendees see something almost too obvious to point out. As Elizabeth Partoyan, National School Boards Association director of Research, Training and Member Services said, “Generally, personal background shapes the questions board members ask.”

Thus, if you sit in on a Dallas meeting, you’ll hear Karen Kyle, a certified public accountant, most frequently fire off queries about finances and how numbers were crunched. Dennis Gochoel, a sales engineer, questions the processes and rationale behind construction or maintenance decisions.

On the other hand, newly minted board member Catherine Wega, recently retired from more than three decades teaching in Dallas, promised that she will be asking about “curriculum, curriculum, curriculum.”

Board member background also shapes the initiatives they push on the board, Partoyan said. In some cases, a parent or resident becomes dissatisfied with a specific policy, or with tax increases, and runs with intent to correct the perceived wrong. Other times, a board member may become particularly zealous when pet causes come to the front burner — a former athlete pushing for more football funding, say.

Greater Nanticoke Area newcomer Tony Prushinski, who teaches at Dallas Middle School, said his big concern and main reason for running for the board is raising standardized state test results. Noting the district high school has missed state test goals three years in a row, he said, “Obviously, there is something wrong, and we need to change somewhere and somehow to get those scores up.”

One example of background driving board efforts may be former Northwest Area School Board member Randy Tomasacci’s attempt to put “intelligent design” into the curriculum. Intelligent design, claims the theory of evolution is insufficient and some aspects of life arose from an intelligent designer. Critics contend it is religion in the guise of science.

Tomasacci, a former minister, never denied his religious background influenced his effort to get intelligent design into the classroom, but insisted he felt it was a viable theory. He dropped the attempt after a federal judge ruled that intelligent design could not be introduced into the science curriculum in the Dover School District.

“Of course your background influences your work on the board,” Tomasacci said.

He cited Albert Gordon, still on the Northwest Board, as a good example.

Gordon, a retired CIA analyst, “has that second nature, to sense and understand how things are going to come out,” Tomasacci said. “His experience was invaluable, priceless.”

Consensus needed

Educators, current and retired, argue that their experience is equally valuable on a school board, but critics fear they will favor teachers in contract talks or labor disputes.

That may be, Partoyan said, but there’s one critical obstacle they have to overcome: sheer numbers. If someone is pro-teacher — or pro any cause, for that matter — “it is usually one vocal minority,” she said. “They are going to need to get a consensus.”

Tomasacci echoed the sentiment. He ran for the board a decade ago because he had developed strong opinions about board direction, and one of the first lessons he learned was “you need four other guys who are like-minded” to get anything done.

“You can have a board that’s eight to one and be the one guy screaming and ranting and raving — which I was in the past — and nothing is accomplished.”

Wilkes-Barre Area member John Corcoran — who as a funeral home director, may have one of the more unusual jobs on the list — agreed.

Your first time on the board “is an eye-opener,” the 11-year veteran said. “Everybody thinks differently. I tell the new board members, hold on for a second because all the things you were thinking aren’t real.

“You learn that most everything you do is controlled by the union, the law, and precedent,” Corcoran added. “Your actual abilities are slim.”

Corcoran, who is the Luzerne County Coroner-elect, also praised the three former educators on Wilkes-Barre Area’s board: Teresa McGuire, Joe Moran and MaryAnne Toole.

“You get into curriculum and that’s there forte, it’s wonderful.”

Not that the board doesn’t have disputes, he added. Once, an observer commented on how calm the public meetings were.

“I said you should see the back room for the caucuses,” Corcoran said, referring the closed door executive session regarding hirings. “You wouldn’t believe it. But we talk it out, and part of the process is to realize that I’m not totally right and you’re not totally wrong.”

Asked if he would favor teachers in board votes, Prushinski said he “will do what is best for the district.” He was tested at his first meeting, when the board voted to reject a state fact finder’s report that the union had accepted. Prushinski abstained from the vote, and said he hadn’t had sufficient time to review the report or get to know all the issues.

Besides, he added, he was the highest vote getter in the primary and general elections, and “I’m sure 95 percent of the people who voted for me knew I was a teacher,” which, he argued, should be proof that the residents trust him to do what’s best for the entire community.

Critics also worry that school educators run for boards to further their own careers. A recent local example is Dallas Board member Russell Bigus, who was the district representative on the Luzerne Intermediate Unit when the LIU was looking for a human resources director. The LIU is run jointly by 12 area districts.

At the time, Bigus was a principal in the Diocese of Scranton Catholic school system, and that system was undergoing extensive restructuring that later closed many buildings. Bigus denied using his position on the LIU board to get an LIU job, but he did end up being hired. Tomasacci, who was on the LIU board at the time and voted to hire Bigus, said Bigus had impressive qualifications and really seemed to be the best candidate. Still, the stigma persists.

Partoyan said the argument that teachers bring a needed expertise onto school boards may have some merit, but also noted that the boards hire superintendents and get the input from principals and district staff with the same expertise.

“I don’t think it is at all a prerequisite or a strong asset that a board has someone with strong content in education.” She said. “We need highly qualified people in the schools, but we need lay people to say yes, what you are doing is right, or no, it’s wrong.”

No training required

In fact, school boards are historically the purview of non-educators in this country.

“It is government by the people and for the people, and we talk about school boards as the ultimate expression of grass roots democracy,” Partoyan said.

Board members don’t need to come to their first meeting well versed in all the nuances of education; they just need to be ready and willing to learn.

Yet, “There are no data, to our knowledge, as to preparedness or orientation to what I call teaching and learning, or curriculum and instruction, prior to service,” she added.

In Pennsylvania, as in most states, you don’t even need a high school diploma to run for a school board seat. Other than being a district resident over the age of 18 and having “good moral character,” the law sets no limits except on offices you can’t hold while on a school board.

Only 18 states mandate that school board members receive training, and Pennsylvania is not on that list. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association offers numerous training opportunities, but board members can choose all, any or none. Tomasacci said he attended three during his nine years. Prushinski said he suspects he won’t need to take any.

“I am well versed in the workings of school boards,” he said.

While there is no research showing how board members’ employment experience ultimately affects school district operations or student achievement, there is growing research that board governance can sharply affect classroom results, said Tim Waters, executive eirector of Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, a federal research lab in Colorado.

Scrutiny of the highest performing districts both in this country and in 30 others has shown that students perform best when district leaders, including board members, adopt clear and consistent goals, and create a uniform system of learning so students and teachers know what to expect from grade to grade and school to school. In order for that to work, the research also shows that “Board members must support those goals,” Waters said.

But that doesn’t mean the board must be unanimous in all decisions.

Quite the contrary, Waters said, adding that choosing a course of action because it’s the one everyone can vote for will often bring poor results. It is more important that “the rigor and classroom impact of what you are doing becomes more important than everyone agreeing.”

And while most board members may come to the table without experience or knowledge of what works in schools, they usually come with experience that helps, Waters added.

“There is a learning curve that goes with (being on a school board). In some ways it is not inconsistent with what happens in their lives and jobs,” he said. “Someone has to be clear on what they have to accomplish, how to monitor it to see that they stay the course, and spend the resources and give guidance to do that, all with enough flexibility to make adjustments to problems that arise in real time.”

In other words, it’s less important what your specific job was joining the school board, and more important that you learned how to get a job done.

On the Web

For a list of all school board members in Luzerne County and their jobs, go to www.timesleader.com

Mark Guydish, a Times Leader staff writer, can be reached at 829-7161.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

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