Engineering the board

Press, 17 May 1989, Page 12

Engineering the board

The business of appointing parents as trustees on school boards has been making news. I’m all for parents having a say about what goes on in their child’s school, and applaud the democratic way in which the appointment of these trustees is carried out.

Some people, however, can’t leave it at that. The simple task of calling for nominations, followed by an election has to become complicated. One school, in the news recently, has found that it now has an all-male, white, elected board. Shock and horror follow. All blokes, all white, omigod!

Apparently the school’s 36 nominees included 17 women, but none was elected. Nor were any Maori elected. They were not elected, one assumes, because they did not catch sufficient votes. This is the democratic process. It’s a hard life. Not content with this though, the school is considering co-opting a woman and possibly a

Maori on to its board. Possibly this token person gets more points if a woman and a Maori, thus you get two boards with one stone. The school’s principal feels that if a co-opting exercise is carried but satisfactorily then ,the board will “represent the community.” Admirable motive, . but surely at complete odds with the original exercise, which was to have a board comprising of parents considered the most suitable to sit on the board. Which, incidentally, would “represent the community.” That they are all white, all male, and, dare I say it, probably all middleclass, is surely just the way the votes fell.

To co-opt a person, or persons on to the board after the act of election to provide a democratic little line-up is surely a . contradiction in terms. If the board had been all female and all Maori would any changes be

deemed necessary? Or would the school be applauding itself on its very liberal and brave new front?

Dr Lockwood Smith, the National Party spokesman on education, says that skills and experience are more important than social engineering. He has my full support. To ignore the very democratic process which was called for in favour of having a colour and sex co-ordinated board is not only foolish, but patronising.

If schools are so hellbent on a perfect blend of sex and colour, perhaps future trustees' could be colour-coded when putting

in their applications. One white bloke could equal one black feminist (of either sex) and so on. The bottom-line really has to be that you trust the parents to vote for whom they think will best manage their children’s, and the schools’, interests, or you appoint them yourself and flag the whole exercise away.

This post-election fiddling is a gross waste of everyone’s time, and money. It will be some time before my children wander through the school gates. I live in hope that this trustee business will have settled down, by then, before it starts presenting, albeit unwittingly, a very good case for dictatorship.

Note: Under the School Trustees Act, 1989, school boards of trustees are to include five parent representatives, the school principal, a staff representative, and a student representative, and two to four persons co-opted

by the board. The act defines the criteria for selecting co-opted and appointed trustees (9): “A board, when co-opting persons to be trustees, and any person when appointing trustees of a

board, shall have regard to the desirability of the board’s reflecting, so far as is reasonably practicable,— (A) the ethnic and socioeconomic composition of the school’s student

body; and (B) the fact that approximately half the population of New Zealand is male and half female. —Home and ’eople editor.