Lawrence Deserves Democracy

Given the ongoing rollback of democracy in America and throughout the world, it is discouraging to see columnist Marcela García join the crusade against democratically elected school committees. That is the Globe’s editorial position too. The Globe prefers mayorally appointed school committees. We don’t need less democracy, we need more democracy.

The issue at hand is the composition of the Lawrence school committee, which the mayor wanted to control with appointments. Community members and the teachers’ union  advocate for a fully elected school committee, and the city council approved a hybrid appointed-elected board.

Community members deserve a democratic say in the kind of education available to their children. The controversy reminded me of two academic works I included in my book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.

First is Domingo Morel’s Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy, winner of the W.E.B. Du Bois Distinguished Book Award, a study of how state takeovers of local school districts diminishes Black and Latino political empowerment.  Morel found that Black elected school boards demanded greater resources from cities and states. Part of the conservative response is to centralize control of the schools, away from community power.

In 2022 when receivership was being discussed for the Boston public schools, City Councilor Julia Mejia objected in a Globe commentary:

Making the move to take BPS into receivership is inherently anti-democratic in a time when 78 percent of Boston voters approve of returning to an elected School Committee. Parents, teachers, students, and members of the community want more of a voice, not less. But the discussions surrounding a potential BPS receivership represent yet another decision being made about us, without us. And for the parents who have been crying out for decades that they want to be engaged in their children’s education, this is yet another attempt at creating barrier after barrier that stands in the way of a school district where all voices can be heard.

School committees for historical reasons have been a crucial avenue for women to enter elective office. Local offices are an entrée to elected service and teach the ways and procedures of participation. Some members use their school committee experience to move on to higher office. For example, Katherine Clark is now the Democratic Whip in the House of Representatives in Congress, the second most powerful position in the party caucus. She started her political career as a member of the Melrose School Committee.

The second book is Sarah Reckhow’s Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public Schools. Reckhow found that major national funders like the Gates Foundation, Broad Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation (which all favor charters, high stakes testing, and other privatization policies) have two expectations before committing dollars to a locale: 1. Strong mayoral or state control; and 2. “a strong local nonprofit advocacy sector and a sizable pool of highly educated individuals.”

The oligarchs behind national and local foundations want strong mayoral control precisely because it is much easier and predictable to deal with a single figure than–the horror!—multiple elected officials accountable to their constituencies. Democracy is messy.  If you’ve read Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization you know that we have our own homebred oligarchs like the Boston Foundation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund. The leading local foundation funding school privatization interest groups, the Barr Foundation, also funds the Globe’s education coverage.

What García and the Globe favor is a top down, foundation/oligarch driven, market ideological system that is handed down by our betters. That may serve the interests of the Globe’s cherished “business community” but it undermines local democracy at the very moment we are witnessing an oligarchic takeover of our national government.

Strangle minority political empowerment and choke off an avenue for women’s political participation in one move. Way to go, progressive Massachusetts.

More democracy. Less oligarchy.

Money never sleeps. Follow the money.

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis

Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is in print.]