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Permission to Disagree

February 17, 2015

An organization leader who is doing a good job works hard to provide the organization’s board of directors all the history and detail necessary to make good decisions. Questions and concerns are anticipated, and addressed in advance.
As a result of this good leadership, meetings usually run with efficiency, decisions are made without long discussions, and debate is infrequent and never contentious. Votes usually reflect unanimous agreement.
While these are traits of good organizational leadership, a tradition of great organizational dynamics is disagreement.
If the board is always in total agreement, then management is not bringing the board tough enough topics. The subjects are not serious enough. They are operational more than strategic; they are transactional, not transformational.
Among the current topics of school sports in Michigan are two upon which there is certain to be disagreement: (1) the role of 6th-graders in school sports and the MHSAA; and (2) out-of-season coaching rules. We see the lack of consensus at the local level and the league level and between different coaches associations. And we expect the Representative Council will lack unanimity if these topics ever arrive for the Council’s action.
These are large topics, worthy of our time because of the disagreement, not in spite of it.

Mandate Mania

January 13, 2017

In the closing days of the last session of the Michigan Legislature, our public servants introduced many bills that had no chance of passage before the year ended and the bills died. Many of those legislative initiatives were to appease local constituents, and they were merely symbolic gestures.

Introduced during this session-ending period when style points matter more than substance were two bills that caught our attention.

  • House Bill No. 6026, introduced on Nov. 9, 2016, would have required public schools to demand at least two hours of instruction concerning sexual assault and sexual harassment prior to every student’s graduation.

  • House Bill No. 6052, introduced on Nov. 29, 2016, would have required public high schools to demand at least 40 hours of instruction on “sustainability and environmental literacy.”

These are not bad things, of course; but I’m concerned about the increasing burden on our schools.

Not all opponents of these bills should be cast critically. Regardless of the importance of the issues, there is a practical limit to what public schools can be expected to do – especially after their resources have shrunk and their school year has been shortened.

Personally, I would like all schools, both public and nonpublic, to teach all children a second language in early elementary school. I would like students to be “drown-proofed” before they reach middle school.

But I want not one of those things mandated without first removing an existing mandate under which our schools are being forced to operate at this time. No entity can do a good job at some things if it’s being asked to do everything.

I wish all members of the Michigan Legislature who have a mandate in mind for our state’s schools will pause to look for an existing mandate to sunset before proposing any new requirements.