School for School Boards

As most public-school superintendents and other taxpayers well know, many school boards are composed of public-spirited, well-intentioned citizens who don't know the first thing about overseeing a school system. Such boards often meet in secret and in ignorance, raise hob with sound budgets, scare off competent instructors, fiddle while schoolhouses crumble and educators burn. Many a board keeps no minutes of what good or ill it does.

The deficiencies of some 400,000 U.S. school-board members are a familiar worry to Dr. Woodson W. Fishback, 43, an associate professor of education at Southern Illinois University (3,036 students) in Carbondale. About three years ago Fishback had an idea: most school boards might profitably go back to school to earn what their jobs are all about. From the University of Chicago's researching Midwest Administration Center Dr. Fishback got funds to set his project rolling.

Of some 400 school boards in 31 counties around S.I.U., 16 were willing to go along with Fishback's "pilot study." Limited by his funds, he cut his list down to six town boards. Quizzing their 44 members, Fishback found that one board met privately whenever it felt like having "a heck of a good time" hashing over town gossip. Another believed its only duty was to "pass on maintenance of buildings," was astounded to hear that every facet of local education lay within its province.

When Fishback began his course last September, he got his recruits to agree to stick with it for a whole school year do prescribed reading and field studies, hold an open meeting about once a month, keep minutes for analysis. With S.I.U.'s Educational Research Director Jacob Bach to help him make the rounds, Fishback is often on the road three nights a week. He encourages boards to define their duties and powers, patiently coaches them on such matters as public relations, budgets, expanded school facilities, staffs.

By last week Woodson Fishback's project, going strong without loss of a single board member, was beginning to look like small, significant landmark in U.S education. To his "students," Fishback fired a fat new reading list of 35 books and pamphlets; he was also arranging four mass forums for them. To the school officials involved, the transformed boards, once of little or no help, are becoming enlightened allies. Said neighboring Murphysboro's delighted Superintendent William Carruthers: "Never . . . have I seen a school board take such an interest in finding out what schools are doing. They are actually reading books on school practices."

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