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School Board members take on problems, not each otherBy KENT FISCHER
© St. Petersburg Times, LAND O'LAKES -- Maybe the Pasco County School Board should change its name to the School Bored. Thirty-minute meetings, an unbelievable run of unanimous votes, board members that actually like each other. . . . This is government? Apparently, yes. Only twice since 1998 has the five-member board taken a vote that wasn't unanimous, excluding student expulsions. In 1999, Jean Larkin cast the lone dissenting vote when the board approved new high school boundaries in east Pasco. In February, the board voted 3-2 to name a new elementary school after the Trinity subdivision. Many of the other municipal boards in Pasco hold tense, hours-long meetings filled with personal sniping and bickering. Not the School Board. Its meetings often last less than 30 minutes. Its meetings are so uneventful that the School Board hasn't drawn a regular gadfly since the late 1980s. The National School Board Association recently picked Pasco's School Board as one of the country's most cooperative boards. The national group chose 11 boards across the country that exemplify a spirit of cooperation with their superintendents. The 11 boards will be profiled in a magazine the group produces each fall. Last week, the board held a public hearing on a $525-million budget,and nobody came to speak against it. Board members didn't even discuss it among themselves before unanimously voting to fund it. So are things going that well in Pasco schools, or is the board asleep at the switch? Board Chairwoman Pam Coulter said tough questions get asked, just not usually at public meetings. She does her tough questioning in the weeks and days leading up to a meeting, and when she thinks a proposal is off base, she directly calls the administrator in charge. Doing that, Coulter said, gets problems derailed before they are brought before the board. For example, a proposal last week to sell hot lunches to a new charter school was pulled from the meeting agenda after Coulter discovered that the district could lose money on the deal. "That happens frequently, but the public never sees that," she said. Soon after board member Cathi Martin was sworn in late in 1998, the board went to Ocala for five days of training in how to efficiently conduct the public's business. The training's facilitator asked each board to draw a picture of how it sees itself. Other boards'members drew caricatures of themselves marooned on an island or with targets on their heads. "We were appalled to see such acrimony," said board member Marge Whaley. Pasco, meanwhile, drew five women holding hands. The training consisted almost entirely of tips on how to get along and how best tocompromise. Pasco's board got bored. It left after Day 2. "We didn't feel like we needed it," Whaley said. "The stuff they were doing didn't apply to us." Pasco board members have a combined 47 years on the board. Superintendent John Long said he tries to get them involved in district committees so that when proposals are made, board members have helped create them and are already well versed in the issues. That helps keep the communication open, he said. "We never have a big project that they don't have input in," Long said. "I spend a lot of time telling them about problems, giving them a heads-up." All four board members interviewed for this story credited Long with running a tight ship. When the superintendent has a clear vision and a good staff, school boards don't face much controversy, they said. "He won't bring something to the board that isn't well thought out," Larkin said. "We have such a trust factor in him, and that plays a huge part in it." But wouldn't board members like to hear a dissenting view once in a while, or at least have a gadfly to keep them on their toes? "I don't see how that would be helpful," Whaley said. "How can it be a good thing when people are nasty and mean?"
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