Photo: Getty Images
Q&A - Should Florida Eliminate School Board Salaries?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Gettr, Parler & Twitter: @brianmuddradio
Today’s Entry: Good morning, Brian, I’d like you to provide analysis regarding the proposal which would eliminate the salaries of school board members. Specifically, is there any evidence that doing so would produce better candidates and thus school board members?
Bottom Line: After an unsuccessful effort in last year’s state legislative session to eliminate compensation for school board members in Florida, another effort is currently underway in this year’s session. The bill proposed by State Representative Sam Garrison is back with a wrinkle in this year’s session and recently passed the House Education and Employment Committee on a party line vote. That’s further than the proposal made it a year ago. What’s different in this year’s version, aside from another year of concerns surrounding the conduct of many school boards across the state, is how the savings would be used. The money would be redirected to hire library specialists in schools who’d be responsible for vetting books made available in libraries under state law. Of particular note, as I’ve illustrated, the CRT book, the 1619 Project, was introduced to most public-school libraries by the Pulitzer Center a few years ago. The idea would be for books deemed appropriate by the Florida Board of Education to be included while weeding out those deemed inappropriate. So, about the proposal...
There’s nothing unusual about volunteer school board members. In fact, what’s most unusual is having compensated school board members. According to the National School Board Association 61% of school board members nationally aren’t compensated. A number that’d be much higher still if not for Florida compensating its school board members. In fact, not only are school board members compensated, but they’re also compensated with wages that are in line with full-time teachers in their school districts. A few years ago the state passed a law to ensure school board members’ salaries wouldn’t exceed the average teacher’s salary in their district because that’d become common.
In Florida the average school board member is paid $35,995. In South Florida, that total is higher at $47,189 for school board members in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach – the highest in the state. You wanted to specifically know if there’s evidenced benefit to having volunteer school board members as opposed to those who’re effectively working full-time jobs. That’s a challenge but here are some related facts from the NSBA’s study. Volunteer school board members are...
- More likely to be retired and/or not working another job (60%)
- Less likely to have a child in the school district (32%)
- Less likely to be a member of a teacher’s union (17.6%)
- More likely to self-fund campaigns (77%)
- More likely to have achieved a higher level of formal education (49% post-graduate)
- More likely to cite student achievement as the top issue
- More likely to view the school board’s decision making as having a direct impact on student performance
This information is interesting though not necessarily conclusive. It does seemingly paint a picture of generally older board members who appear to be altruistic in their work – though that comes with fewer members having their own children in schools (not that having children in schools ensures better results either). Something I do conclusively view as a positive is a lower likelihood of having teachers’ unions directly influencing the decision making of board members. Interestingly, the only other states which pay school board members full-time salaries are Alabama, California, New York, North Carolina and Virginia. This is to say Florida’s current setup is highly unusual. So, is there a connection between states which pay salaries to school board members and the performance of students?
The National Assessment has been viewed as the most predictive assessment of longer-term education outcomes. The most recent data available is from 2019. Florida’s eighth grade students ranked two-points below the national average in math. As for the other salaried states... Alabama’s students performed 12 points lower than average, California’s five points lower, New York’s one-point lower, while North Carolina’s students were three-points above the national average and Virginia students performed six-points better than the national average. Net-net states with salaried school board members presided in states where students performed slightly below the national average on the National Assessment. This is to say there’s clearly no evidence of a meaningfully positive outcome attached with the approach of states like ours. So those are related facts, and what it shows is that whether Florida’s current plan of salaried school board members remains in place or not, it’s unlikely to have a tangible impact on student outcomes.