Former CRSD Board Member Offers Parting Advice To Local Teachers

The following letter was submitted to Patch by former Council Rock School Board member Bill Foster, who resigned in June when he moved out of the district:

Dear CRSD teachers:

You are the stars of the mission of the district. I’ve been in your classrooms and I’ve seen your talent and even your calling. I have seen love and expertise. I personally deeply believe in education and teaching.

Teaching to sincerely help others is among the greatest gifts we can give. So, I want you to know that I am a fan and a friend. That said, you have some important work to do at CRSD and in your public education profession. You need to step up and do the hard work of improving your education leadership. The decisions and behaviors of educational leaders often significantly undermine your work. You, however, get a say – if you are willing to step up.

I will describe a few of my experiences at CRSD that get at my concerns. Prior to joining the school board years ago, when I knew I would be elected and would serve, I went to one of the leaders of your association expressing an interest in speaking with you about your vision for CRSD, your concerns and interests. I was going to be on the school board and wanted to know what you thought and wanted.

The response?: “You are not getting anywhere near my teachers.” I then went to multiple CRSD administrators asking for connections to teachers to get perspective. The response “Let me get back to you.” (I’m still waiting!)

There are many more examples from my time at CRSD in this vein. This is the opposite of how to succeed in education. The negative returns on this kind of selfish, self-interested leadership culture are far reaching and profound. I saw impact on discussions on foreign language teaching, physical fitness, STEM, redistricting, school closures, labor contracts.

Bad decisions become pervasive when no one can actually talk to each other. There becomes a lack of trust and a focus on manipulation and image over a thoughtful future. Further, the lack of trust and focus on image can work to undermine the very foundations and premise of the entire public education effort.

There are some recent examples of which you no doubt are aware. As Rolling Hills was poised to close, school students at Rolling Hills began to email the school board as to why this should not happen. This was free speech and democracy in action. The response to this was multiple school board members by email rapidly and urgently asked the administration to stop these letters from students. The administration did exactly that.

Afterwards one school board member expressed their dismay “I'm assuming that we've [CRSD teachers] taught these kids about our representative form of government and that an individual's voice can and should be heard by their elected representatives for matters that affect them personally, or that a person may have an interest in, or just for the common good. What we [CRSD school board and administration] have just shown these kids and our teachers is that this does not hold true for our kids." I have heard that in addition to the appalling actions of the school board and the administration, your association also contributed. I have heard that teachers were told not to speak of the incident.

Another example of a case where your association leadership, speaking in your name, clearly failed is in how to navigate the substitute teacher availability shortage CRSD has been facing. In discussions of how we could use substitute teacher hiring more effectively to recruit the next generation of teachers into CRSD, one of your association leader’s response to an attempt to discuss was “look, all we need is bodies.” That’s no way to build a future for your profession!

This gets at two specific suggestions I have for you. In all of my time on the school board, frankly, I never saw any significant representation from you and your association advocating for educational program improvements or improvements to your profession. Labor negotiations were never about making your profession stronger. They were about money, money, and money: higher salary, slowing the rise of health care costs to members, getting more for class credits, getting more for sick days, getting fewer days worked per year.

So, I would suggest you change that. And my suggestion is you first work on why it is so hard for you to speak up. You face risks when you speak up. If you speak up and anger your association and your administration, you know that two unsatisfactory ratings might follow and you could lose employment. You know if you lose employment, getting another position will be hard to impossible nearby and with the same pay.

The risks for you are enormous in actually trying to fully meet your responsibility and rights under the constitution relative to free speech, freedom of association, and building a democratic future for the children you teach.

So why don’t you get your association to work to make it easier for teachers to move from district to district? Look, in my career decades ago I was asked at one small chemical manufacturing company to break Federal law regarding disposal of chemical waste. That was a serious thing. I left that company. But I could leave. I had a kind of freedom your profession tragically largely does not have. (And how often in the past has this lack of freedom to easily go elsewhere left a teacher prey to all kinds of things [including sexual] ? Plenty of times I’m sure you know).

But the stakes in your profession I think are even more important than what I was facing in deciding to leave that place of work – they are the future of children. If you can’t speak with school board members about ideas for making education better because they have to be filtered first through the self-interest (and frankly often outsized egos) of administrators and association leaders, the children’s future is lost. The vision of free speech and exchange of ideas that our country’s founders created is lost. Public education becomes a failed idea.

You know what it means under the current contracts when you get a bad principal, weak superintendent, or bad school board. You have to hunker down. You have to watch what you say and who you say it to because you have limited options. That’s not helping your profession or your students. You need to fix the lack of mobility in your profession to move across schools and districts. It would be much better if when you get bad leaders, you could vote with your feet and speak openly. The community then has a better chance to see the bad that is happening.

Rome surely wasn’t built in a day. There are many ways to slowly increase mobility in your teaching profession across public school districts. Start by designing your labor contracts to be as similar as possible with neighboring school districts in year 1. Then maybe try for year 2 and 3. Work at it slowly for the next teachers as others before have helped you have better working conditions. Lead, have a vision for a better future that will help you and the children and the community.

And this gets to my second suggestion. It’s about you personally. Research shows that the people that promote themselves as leaders, the hyper-self-confident people, often convinced of their infallibility, do not necessarily end up actually being good leaders.

So, instead of thinking “I’ll just do my job and stay in my classroom helping children learn” and “I’m not like those people who lead”, realize that you can and should make a difference as a leader. Just because, or rather precisely because, you don’t think you are the best and have it all figured out and don’t need to listen to anyone or talk to anyone, you need to step up and lead.

You need to go to your association meetings. You need to vote at those meetings. You need to pick leaders that act in your name that have a vision for improving education and your profession. You need to become one of those leaders even though you don't think you are that kind of person.

With respect, love, and hope.

All the best,

Bill Foster