A Big Fat ‘F’ in Civics : Democracy a stranger in school voting on year-round schedule

Many school systems have site-based management programs in place. The early line on transfers of power from central bureaucracies to local schools is that they can greatly improve matters or at least bring a sense of involvement in painful decisions.

The former is apparent at two San Fernando Valley schools that will end the year with huge budget surpluses, which can be directed to new programs. The latter was the case in Orange County’s Cypress School District, where principals used site councils of parents, teachers and administrators to help make decisions about budget problems that resulted in a few layoffs last year.

However, local control can be abused. A case in point is the Euclid Avenue Elementary School, in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles.

Declining enrollment at the school meant that it could join the many Los Angeles Unified School District campuses that have switched from year-round schedules to a traditional calendar year. In balloting at the various campuses last year, majorities ruled in one-person, one-vote elections.

But the staff at Euclid stacked the deck. There, teacher and staff votes each counted for 6.32 points. Each parent’s counted for one point. Thus, the 386 parents who voted for the traditional school year lost to 65 staffers who preferred the year-round schedule. So it was one-person, one-vote if you were a parent; if you were a school staffer, it was one person, six votes. This is the American way?

“What lesson does this send to our children?” a letter by the parents demanded to know. What lesson, indeed.

Schools are supposed to teach democratic principles, not undermine them. Even South Africa has embraced the concept of one person, one vote. That’s a lesson in recent world history that ought to be required at Euclid Avenue Elementary.