CHARTER SCHOOL REFORM
Saner board governance would go a long way
Charter school oversight improvement efforts are underway this year, as your Feb. 15 editorial endorsed. But the elephant in the room that isn't being seriously addressed is the circular and inverted governance model of charter school boards.
Current law requires that boards be composed of a majority of the school's teachers. The Minnesota Association of Charter Schools has proposed giving schools flexibility in board composition to partly address this. But unless the law is changed to not only remove the requirement of teacher majority but also to prohibit it, there will continue to be a built-in conflict of interest and a tempting source of mismanagement and possibly fraud in school governance.
Charter school teachers are, by definition, at the forefront of innovative educational practices, and that is where they have focused their attention. Charter schools are designed to have these creative teachers and the parents control the academic program. But a charter school is also a business, and the business part is where most fail.
The pool of finance and management-savvy teachers is not adequate to supply the needs of this many businesses. All teacher-board members are beholden to the school directors for their careers and livelihood.
The governance structure does not support and ease their ability to confront and keep the school directors accountable, capable and ethical. Board training is a start, but this circular authority structure is still biased against a clear definition of management accountability.
Businesses have addressed this issue by usually requiring a majority of outside and independent directors on their boards. Director intimidation of teacher-board members is not hypothetical; I've seen it in action. I urge the reformers to look carefully when setting governance requirements to avoid building in barriers against proper checks and balances.
DENNIS FAZIO, MINNEAPOLIS
WILL ON GLOBAL WARMING
His misrepresentation of WMO taints him
George Will's Feb. 15 column referred to the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization reporting that "there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade" (his words). That is quite an unequivocal statement and one would expect the WMO to have issued some kind of "global warming a hoax" report.
