Dive Brief:
- In a keynote speech for the California Charter Schools Association earlier this month, Netflix CEO and charter school supporter Reed Hastings made a call to action stating schools would be better if elected school boards were eliminated.
- Hastings, an investor in the Rocketship Education charter school network, said the “fundamental problem” with traditional public school districts is they do not get to choose their boards, which he says leads to poor long-term planning and unstable governance.
- Hastings claimed that those issues don’t occur in charter schools and proposed California grow its charter schools from 8% to 90% of all students — a goal that would essentially eliminate elected school boards and replace them with appointed charter school boards.
- In an editorial response to the billionaire, San Francisco Unified School District board member Matt Haney explained that “school boards exist because public schools belong to and are accountable to the communities they serve. That is what makes them public.” He also said he hopes Hastings' comments would jumpstart improvements to democratic accountability in public schools.
Dive Insight:
Similar to Bill Gates weighing in on the Common Core, Hastings' admonishment of elected school boards has many questioning where his authority comes from. Not every charter school is stable or devoid of poor long-term planning; the “good school, bad school” dichotomy oversimplifies the nuisances of school boards and governance. In fact, while charter schools may have the stability of privately appointed school boards, Hastings fails to mention issues of accountability. If someone is failing at their job on a traditional public school board, the community can elect to remove them; elected school boards are accountable to the public. This is not the case with charter schools, where the board is only accountable to its authorizers. This lack of accountability has the potential to create the same unstable governance structures Hastings rebuked.