Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Who wants to be a school board member?

There may be no more thankless job in Sisters than being on the Sisters School Board.

Members have volunteered to spend hours and hours trying to steer the school district through the shoals of charter school controversies, the search for a new superintendent, and perhaps the worst financial crisis the district has faced in the past two decades.

Of late, board members have taken some heat for terminating charter schools in the district, sacrificing state funding in the face of a serious budget shortfall.

The recent developments with AllPrep charter schools have vindicated the board's hard line. Seemingly each week brings word of new concerns from the Oregon Department of Education about the practices of the organization that runs the Sisters Web Academy, early college programs and the Sisters Charter Academy of Fine Arts (SCAFA).

The board terminated the web academy charter primarily because it couldn't get reliable financial information to perform oversight duties. The concerns raised at the state level, including a legislative hearing on AllPrep, demonstrate that those concerns were well-placed.

The board terminated SCAFA because members didn't think the school was financially viable. The school's eviction from its school house and the closure announced Tuesday morning show that the board was right there, too. Nobody is happy about it; the board tried to allow the school to operate through the school year, but the school just couldn't make it.

The early departure of Superintendent Elaine Drakulich resolves any tension between board and superintendent, which was evident in the mixed messages recently put out to the public about how to handle the ongoing budget crisis.

But the rough sailing is far from over. The board's most challenging work is yet to come. The issues surrounding AllPrep continue to demand the district's time and attention. The district must find a new leader who can rally the community to pull through hard times. Most importantly, the board is faced with cutting hundreds of thousands of dollars out of a relatively modest $12 million budget over the next two or three years without degrading the quality of education in Sisters.

We'd all like to think that we can pursue an ever-greater level of excellence in Sisters schools. Board members are committed to try.

Nobody wants to state it baldly, but staff, parents, students and board members all know the truth: rising costs and declining revenues make that an impossible task. What our school board is forced to do now is find ways to do the least damage possible as it carves away at a quality school system.

Who really wants that job?

Jim Cornelius, Editor