Viewpoint: Injecting partisanship into school boards in Indiana is bad policy
Our local elected officials need to vote to protect schools from needless partisanship and political division by keeping school board positions nonpartisan.
In one form or another, House Bills 1182, 1042, 1145, 1240 and 1305 and Senate Bill 279 will inject party identification and partisanship into school board positions throughout Indiana by requiring candidates to align with a political party.
We write in solidarity — together — as the only women on Penn-Harris-Madison’s school board. The two of us are not immune from political conflict, but we do not discuss our partisan identification.
We don’t have to because it’s not currently part of the job. We know we have far more in common than we have different. Between the two of us we are raising 11 children, and we ran for school board because we both share a call to serve the additional 12,000 children educated by our community’s schools. We remain colleagues and friends and serve one team, the Kingsmen.
We both applauded when the Indiana General Assembly depoliticized education and voted in 2017 to eliminate the partisan election of the superintendent of public instruction, citing the need to take politics out of education.
The legislature’s 2017 decision reflected wisdom. We should not take a giant step backward and politicize K-12 governance all over again. This is the last thing our students and teachers need right now as they navigate so many difficult challenges.
Injecting partisanship into school boards is bad policy for Indiana. It will contribute to trustees feeling conflicted about where their allegiances truly lie and undermine their commitments to putting students first.
We don’t need to open the door to the possibility of patronage as we make complex determinations about local hiring, promotion, and retention of teachers, administrators, and staff. Ultimately, we want the most qualified, committed candidates to serve on school boards and partisanship only gets in the way.
nuHaving to navigate a party system might have impacted our decision to run. Our wonderfully qualified colleague, James Turnwald, may not be able to run for reelection because the Hatch Act may preclude him and others who work for the government, like U.S. military personnel, from being able to do so.
We know our community has seen heated public comment at our school board meetings these past two years. The two of us don’t hold identical worldviews or political experiences, but we are doing our best to listen attentively, consider issues deeply and ensure civility and professionalism prevail.
We know our schools are stronger when our community and our school board work together in support of their success.
We need to preserve spaces where we can remember that we are one community. There are so few of them left.
Angie Gates and Clare Roach are members of the Penn-Harris-Madison board of trustees.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Indiana bills would inject partisanship into school board positions
