School Board Makes Lonely Decisions District 81 Seeks Ways To Attract Busy Parents To Meetings

As Spokane District 81 school board members made plans one day last month to spend $200 million, Sonja Thomas and her kids spent a day in the park.

While board members reviewed a proposal to put more computers in schools, Kris Wedel shuttled her three sons from one activity to another.

The five-member board routinely makes decisions that affect the lives of 30,000 kids and their parents - without a single parent or student in the audience.

Board members decide what children will learn. They decide who’ll teach them. They spend taxpayers’ money by the millions.

Yet even when they invite people to public forums at neighborhood schools, they often stare out at rows of empty metal chairs.

“That frustrates me,” said Nancy Fike, board president.

At a recent retreat, Fike tossed out a challenge to fellow board members: Find ways to make those twice-monthly meetings more inviting for people.

Even parents such as Wedel, who routinely volunteers at her kids’ South Hill schools, rarely know what the board is doing.

She didn’t realize board members meet the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month. But Wedel said she doubts she’d have gone to the downtown meetings anyway.

“I go to enough meetings,” said Wedel, whose children attend Ferris High School and Moran Prairie Elementary School. “I don’t really feel I need to add another one to my schedule.”

Thomas works as a janitor at night and cares for the couple’s three children during the day while her husband works.

When the board last met, she was unaware it was voting for a budget - and which school programs get more money - for the next year. Thomas took her kids, who are 5, 8 and 10, to the park to play.

“I don’t even know when the school board meetings are scheduled for,” said Thomas, whose children attend Willard Elementary School on the North Side.

And if she did know? “I’m not going to pay a baby sitter to go to a meeting,” she said. “As long as my children are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, that’s all I care about.”

Several parents said they’d go to some meetings if they knew what the board was planning to discuss.

Kids bring home plenty of handouts at the beginning of the year, they said. Why not a school board schedule, too? Or a note from principals when their schools are at the center of debate?

Lewis and Clark High School athletes complained they didn’t know the board was considering a schoolwide drug testing program last month until a newspaper reporter called to ask their opinion.

Other people said bad experiences at earlier board meetings keep them from returning.

Jeanette Faulkner attended a meeting to complain about a principal last year. She came away describing board members as puppets that jump at the whim of administrators.

At the meeting Faulkner attended, board members went behind closed doors into executive session. They asked the group of angry parents to enter one by one to make their complaints, Faulkner said. Most parents opted out.

“Unless you want to do happy talk with the school board, they’re not interested,” she said.

Only a handful of parents showed up last year to talk about issues not on the agenda, Fike said. She wonders whether the time set aside for public comment should be moved to the beginning of meetings. Now people are invited to talk - five minutes per person - near the end.

Fike, who is resigning her seat this year after a six-year term, said she’d also like to see board members spend more meeting time discussing issues before voting.

“I’m trying to make our board meetings user-friendly,” she said.

Board member Rocco Treppiedi said sometimes the meetings are “too long on ceremonies,” such as teacher and student awards.

The awards are important and inspiring, Treppiedi said. Yet sometimes an hour can pass before board members shake the last recipient’s hand and move on to business.

Pam Shaw knows nothing of teacher awards or five-minute time limits for citizens. She spends her free time at Jefferson Elementary School, working to coordinate volunteers.

She’d make time to drive downtown to board meetings only if an issue directly affects her school, Shaw said. But if such a debate arose, she doubts she’d ever know.

What could members do to lure busy parents like her to meetings?

“I suppose,” Shaw said, “maybe just invite us.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo