Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

We've all heard about the elephant in the room. The beast is gigantic, and we all have to tiptoe around it, but no one wants to talk about it.

In the discussion about reforming public education and its financing, the elephant in the room is school board governance.

The silence came through loud and clear during a panel discussion Monday in Austin with legislators leading the reform effort.

The group included state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, chairman of the Senate Education Committee; state Rep. Ken Grusendorf, R-Arlington, House education chair; state Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, House education committee; and Wayne Pierce, executive director of the Equity Center.

The question was this: As legislators try to figure out how to provide funding for public education, what can they do about poor leadership on local school boards that waste dollars that should go to educating students?

And, unfortunately, too many of these renegade boards govern poor school districts.

Grusendorf talked about the need for accountability and transparency, but the bottom line is this: School boards are local problems that require local solutions.

Shapiro pointed out that when the Legislature tries to push on that issue, the push comes back from the districts, which cry, "Local control!"

Frankly, I'm sick of the mantra of local control, having seen it run amok so often.

In this county alone, with its 15 or so school districts, I can name at least five that have had severe board problems in the past few years.

That's more than an isolated instance. That's one-third of the districts that are, or have been, dysfunctional.

This area is not alone. The Dallas newspaper headlines problems in the Wilmer-Hutchins district south of Dallas. Just last week, FBI agents raided the offices of the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo School District and the homes of its board members as part of an ongoing investigation.

The group discussed training for new school board members who don't understand their jobs. That's well and good — and a task the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has undertaken.

However, that assumes the problem merely is well-meaning people who would do better if they knew how. If only the problem were so simple!

Unfortunately, the real concern is about those board members who either are crooks or who use their positions to further their own political agendas or those of their friends.

While law enforcement, and Texas Education Agency monitors, are supposed to take care of that, hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear in the process. And children who are shortchanged never recover from the deprivation of educational opportunities.

Pierce indicated that the next generation of lawsuits will focus on the inequities in funding of school facilities.

Has he viewed how districts such as Edgewood, Harlandale and South San have used state dollars that were to go to funding facilities?

This newspaper questioned bond issues for facilities in these three districts this spring — where the state would pay up to 80 percent of their costs — because of lack of planning, community involvement and accountability.

School board members have squandered public dollars or spent them without adequate planning. They have had the audacity to tell patrons not to worry because the funds are state dollars, not local tax dollars.

Don't get me wrong. I am an advocate of equalized educational funding and increased funding. Children should not pay for the foibles of their elders.

But to get citizens on board for more investment in their schools, their leaders must talk about the elephant in the room.

Then they must figure out how to get him out. An elephant belongs in the wild.