Last Thursday on my way into the Board meeting I had a brand new experience: crossing a picket line. There were a good number of District teachers outside the building protesting and picketing the District’s failure to put forward an “acceptable” compensation proposal.
The action continued inside, with a number of teachers using their right to speak to the Board during the public comment period to chastise the Board as a whole, the superintendent and individual trustees. I won’t go into detail about everything that was said, except to say there appeared to be a lot of misinterpretation behind the comments. As well as over-reliance on the accuracy of news media accounts.
But there was one comment made where a response won’t be just rehashing the same viewpoints. The head of the union, Dan Liner, said our job, as trustees, was to represent the community and the teachers.
This is incorrect, and, if it is a widely-held view among teachers, a potential source of confusion and angst.
In law, trustees represent the people in the community who have an opportunity to vote for them or against them. If a teacher is a voter in San Carlos, then he or she is included in that pool…as a community member, not a District employee.
Trustees do not represent teachers. They must be concerned about teacher interests because they can’t deliver a high-quality educational program to the community without teachers. But that’s a different kind of relationship than representing someone’s interests.
I could see where not understanding this could lead to anger among teachers when we do something contrary to their interests. It’d look like we were failing in a duty to them. But we’re not, because our duty is owed to the community, not the teachers.
Personally, there’s a different take on who trustees represent that I like much better than the legal one: we represent all the kids in the community who are, or could be, enrolled in our schools. True, they don’t get to vote on who becomes a trustee, but it is their interests, ultimately, that we represent. I know I ran to make things better for kids, and I’d be willing to bet that’s why everyone else who’s on the Board ran, too.