Making Policy Without Reading It?

I've been stewing on this one for a few days. Last summer the Hernando County School Board voted on a number of district policies, making changes based on recommendations from a committee. And now that some have realized what was actually in some of those changes, there is some general unhappiness. This part doesn't surprise me - anytime you make a change, there will be some people who dislike it for one reason or another. The change that is making waves this time is the elimination of valedictorian and salutatorian designations for high school classes beginning with the class of 2016. I know that this is an idea that has been floating around for a while, and some places have already made this move. Again, no matter which way this goes, someone will be unhappy.

Here's the part that really, really, REALLY blows me away. The school board members hadn't read the changes they unanimously voted to approve! They weren't even aware they had done away with vals & sals! Even the superintendent didn't realize that was included in the changes being voted on. What?! *deep breath* I decided to give these good people the benefit of a doubt. So, I went back to the board agendas for last summer and looked over the information that is publicly available on the county web site. What did I find? June 19, 2012 Workshop minutes with plenty of documents attached.

This one gives an overview of all the changes being made to the High School Procedures handbook. (Yep, there it is..."Added language related to change in the designation for valedictorian and salutatorian for the class of 2016 (students entering 9th grade in 2012-13)." In case they were curious about what exactly this change included, they could have looked here (page H69 to be precise) to see that this change was included. The full handbook is again attached to the agenda for the July 31 school board meeting, when it was voted on and approved.

But they didn’t read it.  Not even, apparently, the single page overview of the changes made.  No discussion of any aspect of the high school handbook was ever discussed according to the minutes of either meeting, although the topic of whether cursive is still taught in elementary school was a hot topic at the June workshop. And now, in typical style, time will be spent to change the change…to try and make the voters happy and to save some face.  And really, wouldn’t it have been easier to read the document in the first place?