The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Education Service District

With the recent occurrence of Towel Day, I’ve been fondly remembering the hilarious sci-fi spoof “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” .    As you may recall, this absurd tale begins when alien wrecking ships arrive to destroy the Earth, which has been condemned to make space for an interstellar bypass.    When the humans complain, they are dismissed with “All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints. “   When I first read this, I thought it was taking the flaws of human politics and bureaucracy to a ridiculous extreme.   But now that I’m seeing the equivalent happen in our school district, I’m finding it somewhat less humorous than I used to.

Recently a board seat on the Northwest Regional Education Service District (NWRESD) was up for reappointment.   This is one of the most important positions appointed by the Hillsboro School Board, as it helps oversee a body that provides education services to over 100K students across 4 counties, with a budget in excess of $100 million dollars.   You would think that when such a seat is available, we should announce it to the public and call for applicants, like we do for our (relatively powerless) HSD Curriculum and Budget committees.   However, an agenda item to confirm the only applicant just popped up on our May school board agenda, without any previous announcement from the district.     

When I asked how this opening was publicized, the answer was “We posted on our NWRESD website and emailed the superintendent”.   So, for any non-superintendent to find out about this opening, they would have had to be continually checking the NWRESD website.    Even though most board and commission openings are published in local newspapers, or at least announced in advance by the board which is appointing them, none of this happened in this case.   Note that in many other parts of the state, ESDs are elected like regular school boards, so many eligible citizens may not even realize they need to watch the ESD site rather than the general elections site to know about openings on this board.  By keeping the announcement so low-key, the ESD is essentially reserving the position for a well-connected insider.    

Thus, I proposed that we delay the appointment and issue a real call for applicants.    Unfortunately, the rest of our board disagreed with me, saying that the current action was a result of a “well-defined process,” so we could discuss future changes but had to appoint this year based on the existing process.   I hope we do follow through and make some real changes here, rather than continuing the functional equivalent of posting ESD board openings on Alpha Centauri.

War Of The Sexes?

I was disappointed to see the misleading and inflammatory articles in several local newspapers on our board's recent vote on birth control in the School Based Health Centers (SBHCs.).   I would like to clarify a few facts about the issue:

1. The majority of speakers on both sides of the issue were female.   So claiming this as a male vs female issue, based on the coincidental demographics of the board members, is simply unjustified.
2. The board entered the Tuesday meeting fully prepared to accept a compromise proposal that allows birth control prescriptions at SBHCs, with parent/guardian notification.     This compromise was accepted 6-1 at our previous meeting.
3. It was the SBHC staff & board liberals who absolutely refused to accept any form of notification.   Stepping back from the previous compromise, they proposed replacing it with "best effort" language, which would be completely non-binding, as stated explicitly at our April work session.
4. It is NOT a violation of Oregon law to require parent notification at an SBHC   We consulted with the district lawyer before proposing this, and Director Milller explained the legal reasoning in detail at the meeting.  Since they are on school grounds, the rules are somewhat different than independent medical clinics.
5. The vote had nothing to do with religion.   I would challenge any reader to review the meeting recordings, available on the district website at http://hsd.k12.or.us, and still claim that this was somehow a religious debate.   If you're curious about the (non-religious) reasons why I think parent notification is very important, they are detailed in my blog at http://tinyurl.com/hsd-sbhc-2016 .
6. The final vote to not add birth control services did not "take away" any rights, but merely preserved the current policy.  When the sbhc was created, there was a direct promise  made by the district that it would not distribute birth control.   Due to significant community concern, it would never have opened at all without this policy.      As I see it, there is a high bar for breaking or modifying such a promise to the community.

If you strongly disagree with our vote on this topic, feel free to stop by one of my monthly Constituent Coffees (first Saturday, 10-11am, Human Bean on 10th in Hillsboro) and I'll be happy to chat in more detail.   But please consider the above points before sending more expletive-laden insults and personal threats.