The Scarborough School Board has reached out to the community with two letters to the editor within recent weeks; both letters, although submitted by different parties, were almost word-for-word duplicates of each other and offered no new solutions to the question of how can Scarborough residents actually voice their opinion to the School Board and have it considered in the final budget proposals.

The School Board hangs its hat on its meetings being conducted in a public setting, but they are not public meetings. What does this mean? It means that the public is entitled to watch and listen, but cannot engage with the board in meaningful dialogue. Rather, the public is permitted to make a statement during the public participation portion of the agenda, or the public can contact board members individually and hope that the message is communicated to the entire board. The School Board is within its legal rights, as granted by the state of Maine to do so, but does that make it right?

According to the Maine State School Law Advisory, written by the law firm that represents most school boards within the state, including Scarborough, the “school boards are actually considered governing bodies and are not primarily representatives of the people who elected them.” The School Board members do not represent the voter; rather, the board is defined as follows: “as a governing team, school board members owe a duty of loyalty to its students, employees and fellow school board members even while working hard for change and improvements when necessary.” “Another important result of not being solely representatives is that school boards are not required to let members of the public speak at its meetings,” the law advisory states. But is this right?

The School Board comes to the public when it needs money, and when it wants to have its proposed budget passed, but the School Board creates its budget without public input. In fact, for the past two budget cycles in the town of Scarborough, even though the School Board was given budgetary guidelines set by the Town Council, it came in with budgets that far exceeded any council request.

The council was not seeking any school budget cuts, they were only seeking that the school budget not be increased. The town of Scarborough was looking for a zero budget increase, the School Board presented a budget like it had never heard the request.

Prior to the election on Nov. 4, Smartaxes interviewed all the candidates, both for the Town Council and for the School Board. Smartaxes asked many times to have the Town Council and the School Board meet throughout the year, at least once a quarter (it should be more), so by the time the new year rolled around the budget fight could be somewhat avoided, or at least lessened. To date, this has not happened.

The residents of Scarborough can now expect the same nonsense they have grown accustomed to year after year when the School Board presents its budget to the council. In fairness, throughout the interviewing process, the incumbents that were running for both bodies pointed their fingers at the other body when asked about refusing to reach out to the other side. Something so simple, and yet all we got was one side blaming the other. We as the residents of Scarborough deserve better from all our elected officials, no matter what board they sit on.

The way the rules of engagement are constructed limits public input with the School Board and that just is not acceptable. The School Board has it within their capacity to alter this position. One of the reasons the School Budget vote turnout is so low is because the public has been intentionally kept out of the process and they have no idea what they are voting for, except that they either want a budget increase or they don’t. As it turns out, the school budget vote has nothing to do with providing the mandate from Maine’s Constitution, which requires “Maine’s towns to provide a suitable public education;” and we all know that Scarborough far exceeds that standard. “Acting on that mandate, the State Legislature has enacted statutes creating the Maine school board as a political entity.” Now folks, you tell me, is that what we need, a political entity running our schools? Well, that’s what we’ve got, and that is one of the reasons why there is so much angst in Scarborough.

Things have to change, and the voice of the Scarborough people has to be heard and account for something at both the School Board level and the Town Council level. Anything short of this is just unacceptable.

Robert Rovner is a member of Scarborough Smartaxes.