School Board Group Battles Teachers Union

"The overall problem is that academic achievement is dismal," said Yaklin. For example, "You have over 60 percent of the poor children in our country can't read in the fourth grade," she said.

"The students [in the business ethics class] told me that their idea of being 'ethical' was not judging others and recycling," she said. "On the first day of class I threw out all of my lesson plans to discuss Aristotle and other great thinkers."

The next step for Yaklin was to find a way to effect real change in her state's approach to education. So in March 1999, armed with an idea and a few well-connected supporters, she launched an organization called the nonprofit Michigan School Board Leaders Association to challenge the status quo on school boards across the state.

She soon discovered that meant locking horns with the state's powerful teachers union, the Michigan Education Association.

"We are the alternative to the 'everything's OK, just give us money' crowd," she said.

Yaklin's group is composed of 200 school board members from around the state who are fed up with union domination of school boards. "We're not bashing public schools," she added. "These are public school board members. What they're saying is that if we don't admit to the problems we can't find a solution."

According to Yaklin, when a school board member advocates issues that unions oppose, such as school vouchers, charter schools or alternative teacher certification, the MEA will work to defeat the member in the next election or even resort to harassment and intimidation tactics.

She and her staff of two support reform-minded school board members by coming to testify before the board, helping the board member draft letters to the editor and distribute literature and providing the board member with a support network of like-minded members from other school districts.

In fact, she once spent a week in Michigan's Arvon Township, a small town in the state's upper peninsula, lending her assistance to school board members who wanted to shift spending away from costly benefits enjoyed by part-time union workers to school libraries and equipment.

"The school board member leading the reform was threatened, and his wife was so frightened by the ordeal that they moved to another city," said Yaklin. Ultimately the reform effort failed when union supporters allegedly pelted the house of a wavering board member with firecrackers throughout the night, she said.

"We advocate for complete parental choice so that the competitive pressures will improve all schools," said Yaklin. "We need these public school board members to say, 'that charter school is our competition, but it's a good thing. We're not going to try to make them go away.'"

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