How *not* to reply to a public complaint (how Petero did)
Board members have a balancing act. They are the final point of accountability for anything that happens in the district, but they have no individual duties to make sure things run smoothly - they work only through the policies they set and their one employee, the superintendent. On the surface that’s a contradiction.
Let’s say you’re a parent who is unhappy with something in your child’s classroom. You say to yourself, “I know a board member. I’ll tell them my story and get them to take up my case and get my problem fixed.” (This is not an unusual scenario. More often it happens with a union member who thinks, “I helped them get elected. That board member owes me a favor.”)
Do you think this is a recipe for a well-functioning school district? If I’m a teacher with a difficult situation and a parent recruits a board member to intervene in behalf of my child? No - that is not a recipe for a well-balanced system, although it usually take new board members a year or two to figure this out. Ultimately that would be a recipe for escalating favoritism and chaos.
Of the twelve pages of written guidelines in our annually re-adopted “Governance Handbook” (available at this link), three pages deal primarily with this subject (pages 9-11) and two other pages mention it (pages 6 & 8). It’s important that a district not fall into a downward spiral of favoritism and chaos lead by its own board members.
That’s why our interactions with the public are carefully defined, even to the point of sample response scripts when hearing a complaint (pages 8 and 9). It seemed excessive to me until I gradually realized how things can go wrong when a board member interferes.
With board member Ana Petero, this has too often been the case, and is probably the single most important defect in her board member performance.
(Again - as I say in capital letters on every website page, I am speaking only for myself, and not the school board or any other person.)
This is her fourth year on the board, and she is still representing herself as a troubleshooter, which this email displays. (One of our handbook guidelines says we will “Refrain from promising to ‘look into it’ or fix anything.” - page 10)
And yet just last month we have this reply from board member Petero to a parent complaint email (below). I received this in a batch of documents in response to a public records request. I hope this information is helpful to persuade you not to vote for her re-election in November.
