Editorial: School boards can defuse tension by following rules

Public schools don’t just teach the rules. They have to follow them, too.

School districts have to fall in line with federal requirements regarding students with disabilities and equal opportunity for male and female sports teams. They have to measure up to state Department of Education demands about curriculum and testing. They have rules to follow regarding school lunches and busing and employment contracts and privacy and a lot more.

Then there are the rules about public meetings.

A school board meeting, like any government meeting, is supposed to be conducted openly. People have the right not only to know what their officials are doing, but to comment on it or question it and perhaps shape the way the decisions are made.

Right now, that’s easier said than done. Not just in Pennsylvania but nationally, school board meetings have become the great battlegrounds of the pandemic era as health and politics go to war in a hodgepodge of school meeting spaces.

The rules have gone out the window. Those who oppose the mask mandate for school properties either flout the requirement entirely or give it uncovered-lip service.

It leaves elected officials in a difficult position. Do they have the meeting as advertised and conduct the important business that keeps the district running? Do they ignore the fact that people are breaking the rules? Do they take sterner steps to enforce the mandate or do they stop the meeting entirely?

It’s an issue that has come up in multiple districts. Norwin and North Allegheny canceled meetings in September because of noncompliance. On Monday, a Hempfield School District Board member left the meeting and joined online.

This is an example more board members will have to follow to accomplish the threefold goals of doing the work, allowing the input and following the state requirements. If remote attendance is the only way to make sure all three happen, that’s a decision that is being made for the boards by the noncompliant.

It doesn’t pick a side. It follows the rules, the same way a teacher would enforce the requirements in class. It models the behavior that is expected of students. Parents opposed to the mask mandate or any other action can still have their say but in a way that conforms to the state’s demands on the district. It doesn’t even require the board silently assent; members are free to voice their own opposition at the meetings or to the state.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association recently voted to step away from the National School Boards Association over a letter the larger organization wrote to President Biden on the protests in which it called some of the opposition behavior “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

None of the ugliness is necessary. School boards have it within their power to lessen the conflict just by utilizing existing measures.