Just say no to stipends for local board service

Since July 1, Oregon school boards have been authorized by the body that picks up the tab for public education, the state Legislature, to begin paying members up to $500 a month for their service.

But that doesn’t make it a good idea. And in fact, we don’t think it is a good idea, at least for a board like ours, which serves an urban constituency in Oregon’s populous Willamette Valley.

The idea is to make it financially feasible for a wider range of people to serve, including an economically disadvantaged segment disproportionately single, ethnic and youthful.

That’s a commendable goal, but there is nothing to suggest board compensation is capable of moving the dial to any appreciable degree. Only one outcome is certain: Money that could have been spent on programs actually serving students in the classroom would go toward administrative overhead instead, and the amount would increase annually, as the bill stipulates the initial $500 maximum be indexed for inflation.

An argument has been made that in remote Eastern Oregon districts, it’s a big imposition for a rancher working 10- or 12-hour days on the range to drive 50 miles each way to catch night meetings.

Yes, that’s true. So perhaps it makes sense for those districts to take advantage of the new legislation and offer prospective board members additional incentive.

However, those districts can least afford giving up a slice of their already meager budgets. So our suspicion is that West Linn and Lake Oswego are much more likely to voluntarily pony up board stipends than Ione or Spray, Condon or Dufur, Imbler or Joseph, Pilot Rock or Powder Valley.

Division of districts between the haves and have nots already plagues public education in Oregon, and we fear this legislation might aggravate the situation. It might even drive a wedge between board members serving the same district, should the more-affluent turn down stipends the less-affluent felt compelled to accept and perhaps even tout that as a campaign selling point.

The sponsors and co-sponsors all claim minority status, Democratic Party allegiance and Portland Metro residency. It seems clear their primary objective was fostering greater minority representation, not making board service less burdensome in remote corners of the state.

Eastern Oregon is represented virtually exclusively by Republicans, but the bill drew only one Republican vote in the Senate and five in the House. That offers further evidence the target was well-heeled valley districts, not their country cousin counterparts.

We have no quarrel with districts deciding to opt in, be it to encourage greater diversity or pursue an equally laudable goal of unrelated nature. We think local control is something worth jealously guarding.

However, we cannot, in good conscience, urge our local district to ante up as much as $42,000 the first year — and increasingly more in future years — at the expense of kids in the classroom.

We’ve long been blessed with a diverse and highly capable cadre of locals willing to commit to potentially onerous public service. They’ve been driven by passion for public education, not padding in the pocketbook, and we see no reason to change course at this juncture.

Sorry, but this looks more like a solution in search of a problem than a problem in search of a solution.