Press Release from Representative Mark Finchem:
On August 1st the State Board of Education voted to hand off power to ad hoc committees to develop a wide range of policies from teacher certification and accountability to public school operations. The idea that two members of The Board would have exclusive power to appoint individuals to those committees without further consideration of the full Board is absurd.
The public school system belongs to the public and the policy that is developed by the State Board of Education must be done in an open, transparent and deliberative way. After all, if what the Board will act on is “public policy” shouldn’t it be open to the public? Shouldn’t the full Board be developing the policy? Secretive deliberations lacking in public involvement brought us such disasters as Common Core.
During the regular Legislative session just passed I introduced two bills designed to restore local input to public policy formation. HB2003 sought to eliminate the tight grip that academia holds on public education by opening up the degree requirement for a person holding the County Superintendent of Public Instruction position, which is elected.
HCR2049 would have referred to the ballot a change in the State Constitution regarding the representation of the people on the State Board of Education. Had the HCR passed it would have redefined the State Board of Education to be an elected body as opposed to one occupied by appointed bureaucrats; and it would have replaced the existing Board with a 15-member State Board of Education made up of the individual County Superintendents, with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction as an Ex-officio member.
Given the recent behaviors of the existing SBE I will reintroduce these two measures on the first day of the next Legislative term.
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