While some goals may need tweaking and more cooperation is
needed from those being scrutinized, Times’ Accountability in
Community Leadership Project can be an invaluable service for
taxpayers and local public agencies
The Accountability in Community Leadership Project launched earlier this year by The Times has lofty objectives – to educate readers about ongoing public issues, to measure their satisfaction with public officials’ job performance, to hold public officials accountable to taxpayers and to establish a dialogue between residents, the newspaper and public officials.
We asked school board and city council members to provide goals that we publish in the paper periodically. We then ask each agency’s elected officials, members of The Times’ editorial board, and memberof the public to submit grades.
As with any first-ever effort, there’s been a learning curve. For example, we decided to add status updates to the goals listed in the report cards to smooth the process. Next time, we’re going to add URLs for stories that address the goals. We hope that will assist readers attracted by the report card in getting up-to-speed on any issues that might not be top-of-mind for them.
And we’re learning that the goals themselves need tweaking. Take, for example, the Morgan Hill Unified School District goal addressing teacher recruitment. It addresses how many recruitment fairs district staff will attend. That is a strategy, not a goal. The actual goal is to hire and retain highly qualified teachers. We need to evaluate trustees on how well they’re achieving that goal, not how well they’re implementing one of many possible strategies for achieving that goal.
But we’re most concerned, by far, that some elected officials continue to refuse to grade themselves on their own goals. In the MHUSD report cards that were published earlier this week, Board President Peter Mandel and Trustee Kathy Sullivan refused to submit grades.
Mandel refused even to comment about his lack of participation. We can only assume that he finds the concept of accountability to be uncomfortable or disturbing.
Sullivan said she’s not participating, in part, because she worries that “most people are not informed enough” about various details of school district operations.
Sullivan may not realize that she diagnosed a major problem with the school district – insufficient communication with the residents it serves – and is shortchanging an opportunity that the accountability project offers to remedy that by not participating.
We thank the rest of the board members who participated, and welcome especially Julia Hover-Smoot, who offered a grade for the first time during this second round of evaluation.
If we work together, this project can be an invaluable service for taxpayers and local public agencies.
The Times is willing to continue to refine the process. We’re open to suggestions on how to accomplish that, and continue to encourage all elected officials to participate. We hope that as the process continues, that all elected officials will see the Accountability in Community Leadership Project as the valuable tool it can be with their participation.
