The various officials who are created in the process of developing a representative system of school control often find themselves unable to determine the limits of their authority or responsibility. For example, it is almost impossible to determine where the duties of a business manager end and the functions of the superintendent begin. Thus, when it comes to the employment of teachers and the determination of salaries, the question arises whether these matters should be settled on educational grounds or on financial grounds, or on both.
Especially acute is the problem of determining the proper relation of the board of inspectors to the teachers and superintendent. The inspectors, or the board of education as they have come to be called, are chosen as the immediate representatives of the community. They are citizens in whom the community has general confidence, but they are not charged, as was pointed out above, with the daily tasks of teaching. The board must accordingly appoint teachers and a superintendent. These latter are selected because they have training and technical qualifications which the community needs in the schools. The technical officers have in an important sense an independent place in the educational system. It will be remembered that the teacher was the first one to whom the community delegated responsibility for the schools. Not infrequently the community finds its board of representative citizens on one side of a school issue and its technical officers on the other side.
Take a commonplace example. In the development of the course of study it has come to pass that many new subjects have been introduced which cost a great deal. Manual training and domestic science, as was shown in the last chapter, are expensive. Superintendents and teachers are enthusiastic about the educational value of these subjects. Sometimes the board of education has to curtail the expenditures involved because the community does not seem to be prepared to pay the price. If the board is supreme and the superintendent is its servant, how can a campaign of explanation be organized which will show the community what is needed? On the other hand, if the superintendent is at liberty to go directly to the community without the consent or sympathy of the board, complications arise which are not difficult to imagine.
Statement by a Public Education Association
A series of difficulties in the administration of the schools of Chicago brought out from the Public Education Association of that city a statement of the relation between the board of education and the technical officers of the schools which illustrates so clearly the matters discussed in the foregoing paragraphs that it may properly be quoted at length.
WHAT IS A REPRESENTATIVE BOARD OF EDUCATION?
Some people want the school board to be large, so that everyone may be represented. They think that it is desirable that there should be members on the board from every district in the city, every nationality, the various trades, and the various professions.
A board cannot be made into a representative body in this sense. It would never be large enough to include everybody, and it would be unwieldy in action. What is needed is a small board that will be broad in its interests, that will ask many questions covering all sections of the city, and that can act promptly. This board should have laid before it carefully drawn plans touching all the interests of the community.
This small board has to decide general policies and select the people to carry out these policies. It should not operate the schools but should see that they are operated. It should require evidence from the people who operate the schools showing that they are doing it successfully. It should demand and issue reports that are clear and intelligible to the whole community.
THE FUNCTIONS OF A BOARD OF EDUCATION
The functions of the board of education have never been fully understood in American cities because it has been thought of as the means employed by the people to conduct the schools. This is a wrong notion. The people want trained teachers and trained officers to conduct the schools. The people want the board of education to organize the schools so that they shall employ the most expert people who can be secured.
HOW A GOOD BOARD GETS THE WORK DONE