Welcome to Beyond the Classroom on PBS 39.

I'm your host, Joe Pacitti, and it's a pleasure to sit down with you this evening.

What exactly are school boards?

Well, school boards are made up of locally elected officials at each district in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

They governor to ensure that the learning communities they represent are well served by allocating resources, coordinating policy-making efforts and maintaining a focus on financial stewardship.

But for many of us, understanding fully how school boards work, so to speak, can be difficult.

And while boards of education have always served a vital function in operating our schools, I want to find out how their work gets done.

On tonight's program, we'll be talking with two school board members and an advocate for boards across the Commonwealth.

Let's get started.

I'm very excited to sit down with our three guests this evening, and as always, I always feel it's better to have the guests do justice to the introductions themselves.

So, Stuart, can we start over with you?

Yes, thanks, Joe.

My name is Stuart Knade.

I am the chief legal officer for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, where I have had the privilege of leading the PSBA legal services team for the last 23 years.

Before that, I was in private practice as a school attorney, representing school districts both as solicitor as well as in litigation, defending them in litigation, and have had the opportunity to work with school districts all over the state, as I do now, working with school directors and their local council all over the state.

That's excellent.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight, Stuart.

Brian.

Yeah, my name is Brian Snyder.

I'm the policy chair on the Easton Area School Board.

I've been on the board now for about a total about five and a half years, just won re-election, so I'll be serving another term.

- Congrats to you.

- Thank you.

Until 2025.

Professionally, I teach computer science courses at Northampton Community College and Lehigh Carbon Community College.

I've been doing that for roughly overall about 17 years.

I got involved with the school board because I felt that, as a parent, I felt I needed to be a little bit more involved.

I had three children in the district when I first applied for a vacancy many years ago, and now I am the parent of two sons who are ninth grade Easton High School and my daughter had just graduated class of 2020 and is now enrolled at Penn State University.

And Mike Faccinetto.

Hey, thanks, Joe.

Thanks for having me.

I've been a member of the Bethlehem Area School District Board for the past 12 years.

I've served as board president for ten of those 12 years.

And like Brian, just got elected to a new four-year term.

So be sticking around for a while.

I have three kids in the district.

I have a 8th grader, a sixth grader and a fourth grader.

And my inspiration when I first started out was that I just wanted to help.

I wanted to give back, I wanting to do something good.

I had only one child at the time.

He was, I think, two years old, maybe three.

I forget, it was so long ago.

And I thought it's one of those important positions that somebody has to do it.

Why not me?

It flies under the radar a lot as a political position.

People don't always see it that way, but there's really no more important position in our local community government than school director, because we're there to kind of guide and set the tone and the policy and the direction for our school districts that really grow and shape our young people who go out and will lead our community someday.

So really important work and happy to be doing it for 12 years and a few more, as it turns out.

Yeah, that's excellent, Mike.

And thank you all for your service to our kids.

Right?

Because they are collectively our kids.

So when it comes to the remarkably important job that a board does, Stuart, could you talk through what that is exactly for folks at home?

Well, the job of a school board, in its simplest terms, is to provide governance for the school district.

And what does that mean?

We hopefully... And ideally, school boards are focusing at the strategic level, and they're focused on planning.

They're so focused on resourcing, empowering the professionals that they hire to actually do the work of delivering the education and administering the system, as well as in evaluating results.

And those are the most important responsibilities of a school board.

Along the way, they are required by some fairly archaic provisions of the school code to do things no corporate board of directors does, which is to actually approve the hiring of rank and file staff, all staff for that matter, to approve budgets, adopt budgets, develop them and to approve individual expenditures to go through, you know, be directly involved in the procurement process.

We ask the school boards to do a lot of things that are kind of getting close to hands on.

But their most important job is to really get out of the weeds and focus on the strategic level.

Brian and Mike, can I ask you the inverse of that question?

What don't boards or board members do?

Um, well, one thing we don't do is get involved in, shall we say, the day-to-day operations of the district.

We don't need to be consulted if the superintendent needs to cancel schools because of a snowstorm or if there's a building that may have had a water leak or a power outage or something like that.

So we don't get involved in day-to-day operations.

Other things.

We don't get involved with things - necessarily directly, at least - with things like student conduct.

That's something that sometimes I get asked about, like there was a fight on the bus or there was a fight in the cafeteria.

I'm obligated to investigate that to the level of this is who you need to go to, tell the parent or the concerned person who you need to take that to to have that resolved.

And we have to fade away a little bit with that to see that, yeah, we don't want fights in the cafeteria.

What is the administration doing to keep a safe cafeteria, keep the students safe?

And are they enacting appropriate discipline if they have to?

We don't get involved with the discipline, but that they are abiding by, you know, the laws and the policies that we have set forth.

So I'm sure Mike can certainly expand on that as well.

- Sure.

- Yeah, sure.

And Stuart had mentioned that school boards hire every employee, from the superintendent down to the part-time field manager for a sporting event.

But we really only have one employee, and that's the superintendent, and that's the only person we're involved with, overseeing what he or she does and providing them direction.

So once we approve policy and we improve the budget, we are kind of hands off, and it throws a lot of new board members and it throws a lot of people, as Brian touched on.

Why can't you do this?

Why can't you intervene and have my son out of this problem that he's in?

Or why can't we change this day off to a half day from a full day?

Or, why did we cancel school?

I'm happy not to drive around at 2:30 in the morning when it's snowing, and I don't want to be involved in that.

But we really are just there as that oversight for the superintendent.

He is, like I say, he's our one... ..or she is our one and only employee.

And we direct kind of them what to do and stay out of everything else.

So elections are part and parcel of how board members are elected, obviously, that's how we... We go to the ballot box and we vote for them.

We're filming this on November 3rd.

So November 2nd, yesterday, was Election Day.

What exactly should I know as a parent, as a voter, before I go into the ballot box and cast my vote for a school board member?

Well, I think one of the most important things to know is who are the candidates and why are they running.

There's not often forums for school board members.

Maybe if you have a really crowded race, somebody will host a forum, but it's really hard to get your information out.

We're volunteers.

We're the only elected position that's volunteered.

We receive no salary, no stipend, no anything.

So you're not going to see a lot of mailers or websites or campaign material from a school director because we just don't have the funds.

We're not out there to raise money.

And it's really supposed to be a nonpartisan position, which is why school board members can cross-file as well to kind of leave the politics out of it.

So it's important to do your homework and find out what you can ask around.

Why is this person running?

Are they truly an engaged parent who wants to do more and have the district be successful for everybody?

Are they someone with an interest in the community, or are they somebody who has a one agenda item?

And unfortunately saw a lot of one agenda items in the last couple of rounds because of the various things going on at the national level, the state level.

But as a school board member, you want somebody who's there for everybody in the community, to stand up and advocate for every student, not just your own student.

And I think a good school board member is going to be able to talk about the things the district does and what their vision is for the long term.

Yeah, I agree.

I think it is again, it's very hard to get advertising and word out because there is cost involved.

But I would recommend to people, talk to the people you know.

If you're in the community and you probably know somebody who may know who that person is who's running.

It may be somebody from the PTA, maybe somebody from a local like a moms' club or some other local organization.

A lot of times these groups will know, or know somebody who knows somebody.

And you can kind of start your investigating there where you can ask the questions of the people who... "Hey, what do you know about this person who's running?

"Do you have any information?

"Is there somebody I could talk to?"

Sometimes there are people that are on the board, who may know the person running as well.

And if you have a rapport with your board, that's a good way to start too.

You know, build a rapport with your board first, your current board.

And when people start running, people decide they're not going to run again, maybe they know the person who is seeking that office, for whatever purpose.

And again, like I said, do your homework.

You know, hopefully they are balanced, invested in the community, invested in the children.

Hopefully they're knowledgeable of what's going on in the community and in the district.

It helps that they have some sort of background in either education or at least being a volunteer in some sort of community organization.

That's some of the advice I would offer to some people who are looking to, you know, know who your candidates are kind of theme.

That's excellent.

So in terms of training, you had mentioned education, right?

Or having a knowledge about the intricacies of a board, what the functions are of the community, etc.

Stuart, in terms of training from PSBA, your organization, which is at the state level, what support is provided to new board members, veteran board members to assist them in getting to know their communities and serving effectively?

Well, we have for many, many years offered a wide variety of different kinds of training on different topics relevant to what school board members need to understand about their jobs, about the things that they're asked to vote on to develop the kinds of...

So it ranges.

Everything in our training programs will cover things like procurement, will cover budget development, will cover, you know, a lot of things that relate to the business of running a school district or overseeing the running of a school district, less so about the pedagogy, the actual academics and curriculum.

It's important for school board members to have a good grasp of that.

But, you know, our expertise tends to come from the operational side of things to try to equip board members with that.

Now, in recent years, a new requirement has come into play, which is mandatory training for school directors, both newly elected school directors and those who have been re-elected or reappointed to further terms.

They're the only elected officials other than magisterial district judges in our state that actually have a mandatory retraining, mandatory training requirement.

And it's certainly not a bad thing.

Maybe all elected officials should have to go through some mandatory training.

But there is a five-hour course for newly elected board members and a three-hour course, what we call the advanced course, for the re-elected board members, the veterans, ones who have already served a term.

But one of the things that we stress in this program is that, in five hours, we can barely scratch the surface of what they really need to know.

So we have, in addition to other live and webinar programs and in-person programs that we deliver at various locations around the state, we have a whole catalog of online courses on all the different topics.

You know, everything from the ones I mentioned already, negotiations, you know, labor relations, those kinds of things that are consumable.

They're usually like 25, 30-minute things that can be consumed fairly quickly for school directors.

And we have dozens and dozens of those that they can access online.

That's excellent.

It's nice to know that the scaffolds are there too in place for some people who might not have an educational background, or in the field of education, rather, going into those positions.

All of you had spoken to the idea of governance.

Right?

We keep hearing this word "to govern".

Right?

What exactly does that mean for folks at home?

What does it look like when we're governing as a board?

Well, I think it looks... We're looking more at the long term and, as Stuart added, the operational part of it.

Part of governance is you're dealing with a public entity and you're dealing with public funds, public money.

That's one of the most important things we do as a board, is we do approve budgets, we approve purchases.

And as Stuart mentioned, even some things that might get down into the very mundane type of purchases.

But we still have to have that kind of oversight - contracts, personnel, hiring and firing.

Those are all... Obviously, many of the employees are under contracts as well.

So that's the governance, at least to begin with.

You know, we're not... Again, we're not operating the day-to-day.

We're looking at short-term goals, medium-term goals, long-term goals.

Putting the goals on the superintendent.

Many districts will have goals for the superintendent to achieve within a certain period of time, and the boards will evaluate the superintendents.

They're supposed to evaluate the superintendents, and that's supposed to become a... Generally, what?

I believe like a published summary that's available to the public.

We don't get... ..details as far as like comments, but you will get...

There is a public document that has to be presented, - I believe, Stuart.

- That's correct.

School boards are required to agree with the superintendent on a set of objective performance standards that set the expectations for the superintendent.

And they do the same thing for assistant superintendents.

And then, after the evaluation process... And those standards are required to be published on the district's website.

So everybody in the community can see what those performance standards that the board has set for the superintendent are.

After the evaluation process, the school boards are then required to post on the district website were the standards met, were the objectives met or not.

The details of the evaluation don't necessarily get published, but certainly the bottom line does.

OK. And, Mike, in terms of your experience with Bethlehem Area School District's Board, what is governance look like in that context?

Sure, governance for us has always been overseeing the superintendent.

We've had a superintendent in place now for a little over ten years, which is unusual.

A lot of superintendents last three, four or five years, maybe do a second stint as superintendent, but they have one in such a large, diverse district as Bethlehem is really unusual.

So we have had a great relationship.

So our board truly does get involved in the governance and stays out of the weeds.

We have hired a superintendent and we let him do his job and run the district from day to day.

But we are in turn making sure that there's good policies in place that the employees are following.

We make sure that the superintendent has that that playbook of policies to be able to run the district effectively and meet the needs of our community, because every community is different.

Every board wants something different because your consumers, which in this place are your parents and your children and your families, have different needs, depending on what the make-up is.

And that's one of the great parts of public school districts, is that local control aspect.

The governance in Bethlehem can look different than it does in Easton and it can look completely different than it does in a rural district somewhere in central Pennsylvania.

So we all have our local idea of what it looks like.

And the voters have a say if they enjoy what we're doing or how we're overseeing or doing our job.

And, you know, that happens every two years with our election process.

So governance for us has been really the oversight, having a good policy manual for the superintendent to run the district and then adding things as they come up, approving new curriculums, making sure we're offering the latest and greatest and providing those kind of resources for our teachers and our students.

So what, from the public's perspective, if I'm a parent in the district, what are some of the things and what form would I do this in that I... Let's say that I'm upset about something, or I'm concerned about something, or I have a question, what form would I go ahead and approach that at?

Because it could be granular.

It's something that you might not deal with at the school level as board members, obviously.

But where do I go if I have something that I need to talk about?

Sure.

I mean, on the simple level, I think our teachers are the first line of defense for all our parents.

They're the ones who are going to hear if there's an issue or problem or a question, and then building principals, then it kind of goes up the chain from there.

But if it is a major issue or even if it's not major, but if it's a district-level issue, it's not a problem with inside the classroom or inside the local school, they can come to us as the board.

They can send us e-mails.

All our e-mail information is in plain public view on our district website.

I answer all those e-mails, or at least acknowledge that it has come in.

Some things obviously you can't answer because it's a personal matter or a student issue that you don't want to have a back-and-forth e-mail with, and typically I'll direct them to the right person to contact who can really help them.

Again, we're not the ones to help them most times.

There's an employee somewhere in the district who can handle that.

So whether it gets directed to the superintendent or one of his cabinet members or somewhere down the road, we'll do that.

The public also has an opportunity in every district to speak out at our public meetings.

So we have in Bethlehem five meetings a month.

We have four community meetings and then one business meeting where we approve all our bills to pay and agenda items and things like that.

And each of those meetings has two courtesy to floors where we reserve time for the members of the public to speak, to air their grievances, to ask questions, concerns, and if it's something that we can answer, we will.

Or if it's something where we're going to direct them to a member of the administration to get an answer, we'll do that.

One of the hardest parts of interacting with the public at a meeting is you don't want to get into a back-and-forth with someone at the podium because it's not a place for a conversation.

It is the board's meeting in front of the public.

And a lot of times people come in and think it's their meeting and they're there... And, you know, they put notes down at home and they're ready and they're prepared to have this kind of back-and-forth dialog.

And unfortunately, that's just not the way most public meetings work.

So we try and do our best to answer questions or direct them to the right place or say, hey, stick around afterwards, I want to talk to you, because we don't ever want somebody to walk away feeling like their questions weren't answered or we just kind of blew them off and hope they don't come back because we are there to serve the people.

We do our best to answer their questions, even if it's something we don't agree with.

We tell them where we're at and hopefully we can find some common path forward.

Yeah, and Mike brought up a good point with the meetings.

To expand upon that, the meetings, by law, we have to advertise those ahead of time with an agenda.

So these have to be made public.

What is it now?

72 hours before?

At least 24 hours in advance.

OK, so we have to have those public with all the agenda items that we are going to discuss, be it a committee meeting or if it's going to be a business meeting with voting.

And that information is on, I would assume, most college... ..most high school websites.

It's on Easton Area School District's website.

I know it's on Bethlehem's website.

It's easy to find.

And there is...

The agenda will list when the public comment section is.

Generally in Easton, we have two public comment sections, like Bethlehem does, where one is on agenda items.

So these are items that may have action that the board may be taking that evening, voting to approve or not approve something.

And then, at the end of the meeting, Easton has pretty much an open comment for any issue.

And as Mike alluded to, this could be...it could be just a simple question that maybe you need a quick answer.

It could be a serious issue that needs investigation or follow-up from somebody in administration.

And it's again, as Mike said, it's usually not a back-and-forth discussion or debate.

If it's something that's easily answered, an easy question, that's usually handled on the spot.

But if it's something that involves administrative follow-up from the administration or somebody on the staff, then the district now needs to follow that up.

Hopefully they'll follow up with the citizen and get that person the answer that he or she is looking for to work towards whatever that resolution might be.

Stuart, I'll ask you this question, because I want to make sure that Mike and Brian don't answer this question.

In terms of boards that vote, but when they have votes, regardless of what the matter might be, there are 9-0 votes because there are nine members plus the superintendent, which makes ten, sometimes there's 5-4.

What's the difference between boards that are voting 9-0 and 5-4?

Well, you know, if I had the answer... ..if I had an answer to that question that applied everywhere, you know, I would be looking for a way to bottle it.

Unfortunately, you know, there isn't a universal answer for that.

It's going to depend on what kind of dynamics are driving the issues before that particular board and the particular individuals that may make up one faction or another.

It's an interesting... ..always been an interesting thing to me, that in many parts of the state you may find, and it's unfortunate when you do, bitterly divided boards.

They're all in the same political party.

Their divisions don't come from party politics they come from other things - disagreements about certain fundamentals, about how the district should be run, about what things should be prioritized about, you know, whether we have enough money to fund the programs that we think are essential or need to raise taxes to adequately fund the programs that we think are essential.

So those tend to drive those divisions.

And unfortunately, you know, the interpersonal dynamics in any kind of a group setting are such that sometimes you have people that will, you know, vote no simply because the other side votes yes.

And it may be, you know, even for things that you would think should be 9-0 votes on non-controversial items... You know, when I was a school solicitor attending board meetings, you know, occasionally we would have a board meeting who always voted against paying the bills.

He didn't have a good read.

He couldn't explain why, but he voted against paying the bills.

Things were already budgeted for and spent.

Yeah, I appreciate the response, Stuart, and the fact that Mike and Brian did not have to respond to that.

So, you know, there's a lot of, in terms of national attention, each of you had indicated there's a kind of an enhanced focus we'll call it on school boards and interactions with the public.

And I think that we get lost in a lot of noise associated with that.

Mike, could you talk to us about one of the greatest joys that you have in your current role serving on the board of... ..as the president of the board of the BASD?

Yeah, there really is... A lot of people ask, why do you do this?

And, you know, it's a lot of work, you don't get paid, but really when you get to see the end product, when you get to see students in classrooms, when you get invited to a musical at one of the middle schools or high schools or you see field day at an elementary school or graduation, which is kind of like the highlight of the year for a lot of us, you really understand why you do the work.

You see what you put out, all the effort, all the energy, all those late nights, all those 5-4 votes that you might be arguing about.

It comes down to those students walking across that stage on that night being equals.

It doesn't matter if we have somebody going to Harvard or if somebody's going to work at a part-time job making $10 an hour.

They walk across the stage, they got an education.

They're ready to go out and serve the community.

And that's what we do.

That's what it's all about.

That's the joy in all of this, is seeing that, when it comes that time after that long road, hopefully we put together some tools for them to take with them.

We've made better citizens who are accepting of differences in people and can really make our communities a better place, because we're building the next generation, we're building the workforce, we're building the people that are going to take care of us when we're old.

So seeing that in action, seeing our teachers smiling with a room full of happy students who are engaged, that's what makes us feel good.

That's when we know we're doing something right.

We have a good district here.

That's where you kind of forget about the little things.

You forget about voting against paying the bills out of principle.

You forget about that one vote that didn't go your way, because when you see students in action, when you see the teachers in action, you realize that that's why we do this.

And it kind of checks yourself like, OK, this is what I needed.

Let's go.

Let's get back to work.

Oh, thank you, Mike.

Brian, same question for you.

I like seeing the children grow and succeed, and I'm always proud to see some of the things that Easton does and see what some of the individual students do.

We have many individual recognitions that are done at the commencement for students who are...achieve certain things or who are going into the military and so forth.

So it's always good to see that... ..get to that point where now you're 17, 18, 19 years old and we are ready... ..you are ready now to move to the next phase of your life, whatever your choices are, that you're prepared and that you're comfortable in your choices, and that Easton or Bethlehem or your home district has prepared you for that next five to eight, ten years of your life.

And are you ready?

You're ready.

And I like to see that.

And it's very rewarding to see children grow and succeed.

As a father, you know, anybody who's a parent, obviously, has seen that in their own children, but we see it in all the other children, too, who are involved with the other activities.

The friends of my kids, you know, you see how they have grown and how they have learned and what they are beginning to look forward to in their years, now that they're all in their teens.

You know, it's interesting.

And it's really, really rewarding to see that they're that they're moving on and they're getting independence and they've learned something.

That's the most rewarding part.

That's wonderful.

Stuart, my last question, because we only have a minute left is, if parents are looking for resources, caregivers are looking for resources, where can they go, regardless of where they happen to live in the Commonwealth?

Well, there's a lot of great information on a district's own website, and just to touch briefly on something Mike mentioned earlier, one of the most important ways school boards govern is through policy.

They adopt policies that set standards, expectations, establish rules, and that's how they legislate.

And so, you know, parents can look to their own school district's policies.

In every school district, they're available on the web, so they can learn a lot about the standards and expectations that are there, already established by the board.

One thing that it's helpful for parents to understand is that individual board members really don't have any power or authority beyond their voice and vote at school board meetings.

So they can't really go fix something on their own as a sort of a, you know, one-man show or Lone Ranger kind of thing.

The most effective way they can help parents in those situations is direct them to the appropriate resources within the administration.

Now, in addition to that, we have lots of information on our website that is intended for the general public and parents to understand about school boards and how they work.

And we provide it for candidates, for parents, for members of the media, general public.

But, you know, the Department of Education website, the wealth of information that's out there about curriculum, about, you know, what different things, you know, are priorities in school districts, what the trends are.

There's a wealth of information out there.

Excellent.

Thank you, Stuart, Brian, Mike.

Thank you all for joining us.

And thank you all again for the service that you bring to all of our communities.

We wish you the best of luck in the upcoming terms for both of you.

And Stuart, from the state level.

As the proverb goes, it takes a village to raise a child.

We hope that you'll consider our program a part of your village.

Do you have questions or comments?

We want to hear from you.

Go to PBS39.org/classroom or join the conversation on social media.

I'm your host, Joe Pacitti.

Goodnight.