Dr. David Hopson
I was once again struck by the amount of influence that state and federal governments have on schools and towns at last week’s school committee meeting. We all have those moments when the reality of a situation reminds us of our ‘proscribed’ role as administrators; in this case, it was as simple as recommending numerous changes to existing school committee policies and a question from the audience of why we were making said changes.
School committee policies are, for the most part, a way of interpreting state and federal laws and putting them into practice. The majority of our policies are very closely based upon model policies set by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC). This of course makes sense; Massachusetts school committees can collaborate to develop necessary policies without reinventing the wheel hundreds of times as new laws are put into place. In many ways this also helps ensure that laws and regulations are put into action in a fairly consistent manner across the entire state so that families moving from one school system to another have a degree of certainty that the rules won’t change, that prior learning and credits are transferable, and that students will have similar experiences and opportunities. On the flip side, this means that there is a rather small degree of local control over the major (and some would say minor) options of how a school system (or town for that matter) operates, other than forcing decisions based almost exclusively on funding issues.
The event triggering this reminder of the control of ‘big’ government was having to change a number of policies—ranging from nondiscrimination, hiring, selecting instructional materials, student opportunities, and even school choice—by adding the words “gender identity” based upon Chapter 199 of the Acts of 2011 (effective on July 1, 2012). At the meeting, a community member asked, “What is gender identity?” The law defines “gender identity” as “a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.” As with all state or federal mandates, this law was most likely passed with good intentions, if looking only at the positive aspects that would result from instituting an additional item for everyone to deal with on a regular basis.
Thankfully, this change doesn’t appear to be a costly, unfunded mandate as so many are, despite the assertions from state or national legislators that there aren’t any costs associated with new laws, regulations, or directives. It often appears that lawmakers don’t consider both sides of the equation when dealing with complex items for which they propose legal solutions; i.e., they see the benefits but don’t adequately weigh such benefits against the costs—a traditional cost/benefit analysis that most businesses do on a regular basis. I believe part of the problem is that lawmakers don’t routinely take into account the time, and related costs, of individuals who have to implement the changes required by new laws at any level. Even simple laws involving “gender identity” require legislative time (the lawmakers, their staff, hearings, publishing and distributing the proposals), require state level administrative time (publishing and disseminating the new law, developing new regulations and policies), local staff time (researching the changes, distributing, reviewing, voting, and implementing the changes) and then time to ensure that the changes are understood and put into place routinely to avoid potential legal challenges.
When such a simple change, even though well-intentioned and perhaps necessary, involves this level of work and expense, we can easily imagine how other, more involved laws end up changing the whole order of business, require costly changes, and are implemented with the idea that the new law will be very beneficial. Yet these ‘implementation’ costs are rarely accounted for with funds set aside to cover the additional costs in time and/or money. I know that I can immediately think of several new laws/regulations over just the past year that have been very costly to implement for schools and I imagine that most elected town officials could do the same related to town operations. I’m hopeful that with time, we all will get to see the long-term benefits of the numerous new laws and regulations that are promulgated each year and that such benefits outweigh the cost of implementation.
