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Show ' Why School Boards May Not Be Responsive de and damned if he. I P'ne School oS't" fars has made at te s Patrons, creatfe bk 5 , dl"g needs, bu2det ' andcurricu,; a Positive step '"dsW; ' Pa-ivIiti,; i- constructive with stresses Fiinders eir. help, i terestedinturniJ 5 , of responsibility3 districts. 0 fr ttH, "There is not a n Pi' panacea to the prg? school boards today "J'Si " T- esa,d' crf 1 This is the first in a scries of articles ', on school boards and the problem of ! responsiveness to the community. By S1IAKON' MOUKKY In recent years, Utah school boards ; are being asked to Ix'ar substanl ially heavier loads of responsibility for their ever-increasing student and patron populations, with little or no ; 'compensation for the added burden, ; according to a HYU professor who has analyzed the situation. The combination of increased load, ! with no increase in pay or assignment shift, can create serious problems in a school district - problems Alpine Sch(X)l District Board of Kducation are discovering. Dr. Neil Flinders, a professor at Brigham Young University in the department of Education, says it isn't fair to expect the same number of sch(xl board momlxrs to handle the problems of thousands of patrons when originally t ho district handled hundreds. "You gel school boards taking care of problems rather than spending any lime preventing problems; hence you get 'custodialism,' which is fine for a building but not so good for district children," says Flinders. Flinders put his views into a paper recently published at the university educational conference. 'Pilled "Custodialism, A Cradle or a Casket," it has won Flinders acclaim from several corners. lie has long been concerned with the trend lxth nationally and in Utah that school boards are virtually expected ex-pected to take over for parents -- "to teach, feed, babysit and raise students." "The problem is rooted in the patrons delegating loo much responsibility," says Flinders. "There's more than the system can handle." "We need to lake a new look at (he responsibility of members of school boards. That means they have got to have constituents who will work with them instead of squabble with and attack them. Otherwise they'll lose touch with the real issues." Flinders summarized the growt h in the larger Ulah school districts from l!).r) lo 1975 - he notes that his in formation is now almost ten years old - and found boards that used to deal with student populations of several hundred now faced with populations of several thousand. They have necessarily delegated staffing, curriculum development, and administration duties while they attempted lo handle swelling enrollments and overcrowded facilities, he said. Flinders points out that Utah has always had school districts that lake in vastly more area than is the norm for other states. Idaho, for instance, has more than a hundred districts. Ulah has never had more than 40. The BYU professor said that although consolidation may save in some cost areas, the burden on board of education members is understandably un-derstandably heavier. "That's atypical of most states - to have such few districts," comments Flinders. "That and the booming population puts enormous pressure on local boards." Flinders thinks the solution is not to add numbers to school boards but to expand their reach into the public. "And then the public must support the officials they elect," he notes. "The whole sense of consensus in the nation has deterialed. I think we saw that happen during Vietnam, and it's reflected in everyday life in our reaction lo school board decisions. People just disagree wilh everything. The poor guy in city council or on a board of education is damned if he |