Public and corporate boards of directors provide strategic direction, ensure legal compliance and oversee the Chief Executive. They have no management responsibilities. The Upper Adams School Board has never understood that.
At Tuesday’s meeting board member Matt Lustig provided the quintessential example of what boards are not supposed to do. Presumably because he wasn’t paying attention, he approved the school play then later challenged it because it contained language he felt would offend the deeply religious. Except for not paying attention to the agenda, so far so good.
An acceptable procedure would have been to make a motion that the play not be approved and during discussion address language concerns and, if the board passed the motion, drop the issue in the Chief Executive’s lap, a.k.a. the Superintendent, for resolution. That didn’t happen.
Instead, Lustig elucidated his correction efforts, not part of his board member portfolio, by contacting someone external to the district. It was at about this time that it became obvious he had not shared his list of offensive words with the board. They were caught collectively flat-footed. They were confused as to the issue and the chair, Tricia Plank, providing no leadership, sat by stoically, unfazed by the confusion. This was the Matt Lustig show.
Then things got very odd as Lustig and Marya Djalal expressed their personal religious beliefs. Djalal mentioned the First Commandment and Lustig stated it was a sin to use some of the language in question. This discussion appeared to me and perhaps many as a religious test, potentially exposing the district to legal troubles.
Neil Weigle asked the most salient questions: Who is going to judge whether corrected language is religiously acceptable? Doesn’t this motion put each board member’s religious beliefs in sharp focus since a no vote could be interpreted as accepting what some consider a violation of religious norms? Lustig then demonstrated extraordinary obfuscation by not answering either. I infer that was because in his quest to tilt at this windmill he hadn’t thought things through.
The best approach would have been to privately contact the Superintendent and ask that the inappropriate words be removed. That approach, of course, would have deprived Lustig of this current grandstanding opportunity.
My comments are not the result of a difference of opinion on the offensive words but rather a warning that when the board strays from its intended purpose unanticipated outcomes can result.
