Executive Director’s Note: Looking back and looking ahead 

As our regular readers know, we have been having a lot of fun this year celebrating the 75th anniversary of the California School Boards Association. We have been blessed by having an enterprising and resourceful staff who have had the forethought to save many of the documents and records of the association that have helped us to bring the history of CSBA to life as we have honored the commitments and successes of the past, keeping an eye on the bridges to the future.

I will never forget how, shortly after I became executive director in 2001, I was talking with Cindy Warfe of our Communications staff, and she told me of the boxes and boxes of historical materials that she had saved from the ash heap.  As many of us have pored over these incredibly important documents, we have felt not only the history of CSBA come alive, but also the times in which our predecessors lived and worked on behalf of the public schools in California.

Many of the early records of the association contain actual transcripts that were kept of our governance meetings, as well as verbatim accounts of major speeches and copies of letters that were presented to us by notable figures of the time, be they presidents and governors or Distinguished Teachers of the Year.

It doesn’t take much imagination to feel the intensity of concern that faced school board members and superintendents throughout the years.  They coped with the challenges of the Great Depression; the war years of the 1940s; the stunning population growth in California in the 1950s; the civil rights movement of the 1960s; the implementation of industrial-style collective bargaining and the tax revolt of the 1970s; and the decades that followed when our state leaders began to lose their way and their vision for what was possible in our great state—and the public schools began to gradually lose their jurisdiction to the “command and control” environment and the “bright idea” syndrome coming out of Sacramento and now, regrettably, Washington, D.C.

And yet, throughout all of this, there have been visionary and optimistic leaders in the public schools who always kept their eye on the ball, had an instinctive feel for what it was going to take to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population and, oh, by the way, had established some pretty hefty expectations for kids long before someone in Washington decided that the “problem” with the public schools in this country was that we had no standards and no accountability for meeting those standards.

Our leaders also had great senses of humor—a highly desirable quality in the face of the challenges of our times and the attacks on the public schools.  Reading through some of the transcripts and reports of the different eras shows that the men and women who preceded us as leaders in the California School Boards Association knew the difference between taking themselves too seriously versus the serious talk about what goes on in the real life of kids and schools and the communities we serve.

By the time you read this, the gubernatorial election will be over, and either Arnold Schwarzenegger will have been elected to a full four-year term, or the Phil Angelides era will be upon us.  Either way, 2007 will be an important—and possibly watershed—year for the public schools in California.

Shortly after the new year, we expect the research projects commissioned by the legislative leadership of Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Senate President pro Tem Don Perata and State Superintendent Jack O’Connell will have been delivered to the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence, and we will see whether or not they will provide the road map for a sensible and coherent conversation about what it takes to meet the highest academic standards in the country while being financed near the bottom in per pupil funding.

In preparation for this development, we have been very grateful for the support of the Hewlett Foundation in supporting CSBA (on behalf of the Education Coalition), in partnership with the PTA, Children Now and the League of Women Voters as we have carried out a public engagement campaign and the coalition-building that will be necessary to support the agenda that might emerge from the work of the researchers who have been studying the public schools for the past year.  If we cannot support that agenda, then we will have positioned ourselves to take another path, all with the hope of either securing support from the Legislature for necessary and desirable changes in how we are financed and governed—or taking our message to the people, directly.  Next year will be important because it is in 2007 we will work to place something on the ballot in 2008, if that route is necessary.

Next year will also see us face the continuing vagaries of an uncertain economy and a state budget that looked good this year (as long as you were growing!) and may be problematic in 2007; the debate that will commence in Washington with the scheduled reauthorization of No Child Left Behind; and a legal debate over the constitutionality of the legislation that provided some measure of mayoral control over the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Throughout the year, the leaders of the California School Boards Association will continue to keep our eyes on the ball, just as our predecessors have for 75 years.

Because then, as now, we’re in it for the kids!