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“Government at its best”

Kentucky School Advocate
July/August 2018

By Madelynn Coldiron
Kentucky School Advocate editor

“I’ve long believed that state and local governments have a better chance to be efficient and responsive than does the federal bureaucracy, which tries to fit solutions to problems that vary from one locale to another.” — President Ronald Reagan

Picture this scene in an aisle at your local Kroger:
Parent: “How come the principal at my kid’s school says she’s getting less money from the district’s budget?”
School board member: “I don’t know, you’ll have to call Frankfort or ask the state manager.”

This is the reality when locally elected representatives of the people have their hands tied. While this example is based on school boards, local decision-making control is an issue that should be front and center for any elected public body, including fiscal courts, city councils – even state legislatures. School boards, however, are the most vulnerable because the “takeover” concept is enshrined in state law. To date, in the nearly 30 years since the Kentucky Education Reform Act was enacted, this law has been used three times.

“School boards are the vital link between a local community and its public schools. Given that the vast majority of funding for schools comes from local taxes and the state, it’s important to have this robust connection to citizens’ and taxpayers’ oversight. School board members ensure that a community’s values, hopes, and dreams are alive in their public schools.”—Mary Broderick, president, National School Boards Association, 2011-12

Let’s pull back and take a broader view: When did local decision-making become a bad thing? Where did this blanket attitude of suspicion about local leaders – this automatic, disdainful assumption of bad intentions – come from? Why has it become acceptable to overrule what voters decide is needed when they choose local representation? Because that’s what the loss of local control means: that taxpayers of all stripes lose their voice on the agencies that represent them. Will someone from Frankfort (or Washington) be responsive to their concerns? Officials at those levels are not accountable to the voters and may not have the gut-level understanding of the people, community and local history needed to make decisions.

“Local issues are and always have been most effectively handled at the local level, not by federal or state bureaucrats in far-away places. Local elected officials know the needs and concerns of their constituents because they live, work, worship and learn in the same community.”— J.D. Chaney, deputy executive director, Kentucky League of Cities

This column is not intended to weigh in on the Jefferson County Schools issue; KSBA already has done that (http://www.ksba.org/Downloads/JCPS%20statement%20KS0501.pdf). It is meant to raise the alarm about the insidious notion that distant officials, be it at the state or national level, know more about what’s good at the local level than the community’s own elected officeholders in a system of government designed to reflect the will of the people. Communities do not need rescue from higher levels of government when their local agencies make poor decisions; their recourse is found in the voting booth.
Do we feel strongly enough about this local representation principle as a democracy to speak out for it? How “woke” is the average citizen to this trend, and how can their consciousness be raised? Kentucky is now requiring a civics test for high school graduation – will the next generation of voters be more tuned in to how important it is to have an elected local government?
Or will we someday look back, like the Jefferson County parent-taxpayer who, faced with the reality of the state takeover of his school district, told the school board there, “I’m sad to say that it took me until this week to understand what this board represents. It represents government at its best.”

“When you are in local government, you are on the ground, and you are looking into the eyes and hearts of the people you are there to serve. It teaches you to listen; it teaches you to be expansive in the people with whom you talk to, and I think that that engagement gives you political judgment.” — Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor
to President Barack Obama