School Boards in Pennsylvania

A school board is a legislative body of citizens called school directors, who are elected locally by their fellow citizens and who serve as agents of the state legislature. Each board consists of nine members who serve four-year terms of office, without pay.

School directors, although locally elected, are really state officials, co-partners with the legislature. They are designated by school law to administer the school system in each district.

What's the law? How are school boards organized? What responsibilities does a school board have? What duties must they perform?

Constitutional mandate

Public education is fundamentally a state responsibility, mandated by the Pennsylvania constitution. To carry out this mandate, the General Assembly created school districts and school boards. It conferred broad legal powers to the local boards, making them autonomous in many of their operations. Therefore, the school board is a political subdivision of the state for the purpose of convenient administration of the schools.

 

Board organization

Officers of a school board include a president, a vice president, a treasurer and a secretary. The board may employ a solicitor, establish responsibilities and fix a salary.

By law, all school boards organize during the first week of December. At this meeting, a president and vice president are elected to serve one-year terms of office. A treasurer, however, is elected in May to serve a one-year term that begins the first day of July. Every fourth May the board elects a school board secretary whose term of office is four years.

The school fiscal calendar for the majority of public school districts is July 1 to June 30. A few operate on a calendar year.

Each school district is assigned to one of the state's 29 intermediate units, which is operated by a governing board composed of locally elected school directors from the school districts that make up the intermediate unit. IU board members serve three-year terms and may succeed themselves without limitation as long as they remain local board members.

 

Board responsibilities

School boards have three main functions -- planning, setting policy and evaluating results.

Planning -- Boards are required to engage in planning by the regulations of the State Board of Education. Appropriate reports of such must be filed with the state Department of Education.

Setting policy -- The central responsibility of the board is to be the policy-forming body. The idea of local control of education means that policies governing the operation of schools are to be formed in response to local needs and desires. Policy means actions of the board that set written goals and objectives for the school.

Evaluating results -- The board evaluates the results of planning. Evaluation completes the loop and leads to more planning.

As a group, the board is not an administrative body, nor a "rubber stamp" for professional educators. The selection of competent administrators who carry out public policies established by the board is one of the board's most important functions.

 

Some required duties

 

• Adopt courses of study in consultation with the superintendent.
• Specify time and place for board meetings, and meet at least once every two months.
• Take action on certain matters only by an affirmative vote of the majority of all members of the board, duly recorded, showing how each member voted.
• Establish the length of the school term.
• Adopt textbooks.
• Retain permanently the minutes, the auditor's annual reports, each annual financial report and other documents.
• Elect superintendents and hire necessary employees.
• Enter into written contracts with professional employees and into collective bargaining agreements.
• Adopt the annual budget.
• Levy taxes; appoint a tax collector under certain circumstances.
• Provide necessary grounds and school buildings.
• Prescribe, adopt and enforce reasonable rules and regulations regarding school activities, publications and organizations.
• Provide special education for mentally or physically handicapped children.
• Provide for a school census of students.

Adapted, with permission, from publications of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association