School Boards Ducking Transparency

The Kentucky Enquirer just released results of its survey on “Can you contact your school board?”

This front page, top of the fold article makes it clear that far too many local school boards are not responsive to the public that elected them, often even omitting very basic things like member contact information in their Web sites.

As part of its study, the Enquirer looked at 63 Web sites for greater Cincinnati public school districts, including those in Northern Kentucky. In 41 of those sites there are no phone numbers available for even one of the local board members. In six more, only some member’s phone numbers are listed. Nineteen districts omit all board member E-Mail addresses while another nine only post some Internet contact information for some members.

This new report offers yet another nice example of the sorts of problems that were discussed in a recent Bluegrass Institute/Friedman Foundation report about public school financing.

That report discusses how changes in school funding, where less money now comes from local sources and more comes from the state, tend to reduce responsiveness of local school systems to the citizens they serve. Some have disputed those observations in this BIPPS/Friedman report, but it looks like a lot of Enquirer readers would agree that the comments are “right on.”