School Advisory Committee wants its voice heard directly by board

In January, the School Advisory Committee (SAC) asked the school board to provide an explicit and direct pathway of communication between the two entities. The school board responded with a proposed policy that limits the committee's access to exclusively working through the secondary school principal.

The SAC is a community-run group that provides recommendations and suggestions to school administrators. Membership is open to the public, allowing parents, families and community members to ask questions, air concerns and make recommendations for the schools.

The ongoing discussion applies exclusively to the advisory committee for the middle and high schools. The Parent Teacher Community Club is the elementary school's equivalent organization, but it has served primarily in a fundraising capacity in recent years.

The school board policy that defines the role of the SAC is called BP-1220. Essentially, it serves as the committee's bylaws. It defines the group's mission and level of access to administrators and the school board.

This January, the school board organized a work session to clear up the disconnect between itself and the committee. The issue has not been resolved and continues as a source of contention with advisory committee members and the school board.

Following the January work session, the school board's policy committee - appointed by the board itself - released a new draft of the SAC's governing policy, notably removing the community group's access to the school board through the principal. Any recommendations would go only to the principal, who could then decide what to do with them.

"They approached us and said they wanted more explicit guidelines for the advisory committee," Board President Dave Wilson said of the proposed revisions. "They just didn't like guidelines we gave them."

Before the proposed changes, the policy stated that the committee should "serve as an advisory body that makes recommendations to the board members through the principal." The version of the policy that Wilson (and the rest of the policy committee suggested) states that the group should instead "serve as an advisory body that makes recommendations to the school principal."

The language change, committee members said, would reduce their ability to get recommendations before the school board.

The proposed revised policy, however, leaves intact the provision that the chair of the advisory committee "shall report to the board at least once per school quarter," though some members say their recommendations receive little response.

James Edens serves as the chair of the advisory committee. He explained the group's desire to maintain access to the board stems from a place of community input.

"One of the missions of the school board is community engagement," Edens said. "And now, here's a community committee made up of community members, and there is no way to ever access the school board except by being a persons-to-be-heard at one of their meetings."

When City Hall officials heard about the proposed changes, they were concerned. So much so that Assembly Member Bob Dalrymple attended a June 6 school board policy committee meeting to emphasize the importance of community advisory groups.

Borough Manager Mason Villarma echoed Dalrymple's sentiments in a separate interview. "I see the SAC as parallel to the borough's Economic Development Board or Planning and Zoning Commission," Villarma said. "They provide non-binding recommendations, but the assembly agrees with them 95% of the time. It's a great way to hear right from the people."

Villarma added that if the assembly made its decisions without committee input, "we would have a far lesser product."

After the Sept. 16 school board meeting, the Sentinel asked Superintendent Bill Burr if he has ever followed recommendations made by the advisory committee.

"Well, they don't always have all the information," Burr said on Sept. 16. "They proposed all these safety changes to the schools, like buzzers for the doors and that sort of thing. But school shootings have always been around. This isn't anything new."

Wilson and board member Brittani Robbins also expressed concern at the Sept. 16 board meeting about being directed by a non-elected committee. Wilson repeatedly reinforced that school matters should follow the established chain of command: principal, superintendent, school board.

"How would you feel if someone wanted to get a story published in the Sentinel and they went to your editor instead of you? Not great right?" Wilson said, explaining his logic in an interview.

Just like the borough's advisory boards and commissions referenced by Villarma, the SAC's current role is only to make recommendations to the board; its advice is not binding. School Board Member John DeRuyter explained this at the Sept. 16 board meeting. DeRuyter comes to the issue with unique experience; before he was a school board member, he sat on the advisory committee.

"The SAC cannot and should not ever direct the school board to do anything," he said. "However, the SAC can advise and suggest things worth considering. That's different from a demand."

Committee member Brian Ashton emphasized the group is specific in its recommendations, and only makes official recommendations when it sees fit.

"It's rare when we go on record to make a recommendation," he said. "But there are a few things that we've weighed in on that should have been considered very valuable."

One proposed solution is for the advisory committee to provide a regularly scheduled non-binding report to the school board. Community member Sylvia Ettefagh and board member Angela Allen both support this idea.

The school board tried to pass a compromise version of the policy at its Sept. 16 meeting, but board members DeRuyter, Allen and Liz Roundtree voted to send it back to the policy committee for further consideration. Robbins and Wilson both voted to pass the policy as written.

The compromise version does grant the SAC access to the school board. It states the committee can provide recommendations "to the principal and to the school board through the principal when the topic is in their purview."

However, it also reworded the "purpose" section of the SAC's governing policy. The compromise version states the committee's role is to "assist the school principal in enacting the school board's mission." Previously the responsibility was to directly "assist the school board."

SAC members Ashton and Edens spoke against the proposed version at the meeting.

"It's a process," Edens said. "Our goal is to get some sort of effective communication."