Joel Barlow is a good, strong school.  It needs and deserves a better, stronger, and more unified board than the one it has now.  Without it, Barlow runs the risk of going backwards.

I’ve attended many of the Region 9 board meetings over the past few years, both those with a large public turnout and those with virtually no audience at all.  With or without an audience, progress is often impeded due to members who are promoting their own agendas rather than the school’s best interests, or are posturing instead of listening, or are too scarred by the previous disastrous building project to face future challenges with confidence.  Micromanagement, mistrust, and poorly informed decisions (or no decisions at all) are the unfortunate byproducts.  This atmosphere, sooner or later, must inevitably take its toll on the administrators who report to the board, and eventually on teachers and students.  Everything flows downhill.

This is not meant to be a blanket criticism of all current board members.  They all appear to be well intentioned, smart, and capable individuals.  But that’s really the point:  it takes more than a bunch of smart, capable individuals to create a functional board.  It takes enough members with the will to put differences and prejudices aside, listen to and respect other points of view, and spend their energies on accomplishing something rather than finding reasons for not doing it.  The Region 9 board isn’t there yet.  We need a major change in attitude and approach in order for Barlow to move forward.

I know this situation can be changed for the better because I’ve done it.  Over the last 15 years, in two separate instances, I’ve joined boards with the same sort of negative dynamics, where the organizations involved were going sideways at best.  With a lot of help from like-minded colleagues, I took a leadership role in bridging gaps and building a sense of shared purpose among those who had formerly been on opposing sides.  The keys to success were: 1) identifying the real issues and common goals while avoiding distractions, 2) putting aside my own personal opinions and preferences when they were blocking progress, and 3) communicating openly, especially with those I seemed to disagree with.

The Region 9 board needs to break away from the past and start moving forward.  It needs to start restoring its credibility with parents and taxpayers, and bringing itself closer to the Redding and Easton communities.  Most importantly, it needs to address, constructively and decisively, such issues as stagnant test scores and badly needed improvements to Barlow athletic facilities.

I know I can help.

(Redding Pilot, September 13, 2007)