It’s your school district.  What process would you like the board to use?

How about this.  Give the community advance notice of what’s coming.  Search out, share, and base decisions on relevant research.  Provide opportunity for citizens to be heard, and influence outcomes.

Consider the recent cuts in MARS.

The program had four professionals.  Three after last year.  Two after this year’s cuts.  They develop math curriculum, train and support math teachers.  Intuitively, math is pretty fundamental. You’d think anything helpful would be the last thing cut.

But how helpful is MARS?  Having “math” as your first name provides no answers.

The board had before it little in the way of program details, district data, or others’ research findings.  The superintendent recommended the cut.  Teachers overwhelmingly opposed it.

Community members had no more basis for informed input than board members.

For me, it was as irrational to vote against the cut as for it.  Hence my vote to abstain – coupled with my alternative: give more budget authority to teachers.

There are times when any decision is better than none.  As Yogi Berra advised, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” But those times are rare.

If you have no destination in mind, either fork will do. But if you do, a road map can substantially improve the odds of getting there.

To what extent should an elected official simply reflect the polls, or a count of e-mail?

Edmund Burke, an 18th Century Member of Parliament, put it to his constituents this way, “Your representative owes you . . . his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” Board members were elected to make these decisions.

But community participation in lively board dialogue is far different from holding a finger to the wind. Participation in the all-day kindergarten debate was democracy at its best.

As the dialogue evolved, I responded to dozens of e-mails. Some included references to research. The findings and arguments were incorporated into a memo on my Web page (http://soli.inav.net/~njohnson), “All-Day Kindergarten: Sorting Through the Pros and Cons.”

Reference to it produced yet more e-mail, dialogue, and revisions.

By last week’s board meeting the process had worked.  Rational positions could be taken by board members – whether for or against.  Community members also had access to the relevant research. Board members got lots of community input.

Two weeks earlier I estimated three votes for board member Levey’s proposal. By last week it was 7-0. The input made a difference.

Issues fell into two categories: educational value and equity.

Seldom are educational research findings unanimous. But it’s no more true that “research can prove anything” than that “everything causes cancer.”  From the Reagan Administration’s What Works to ERIC’s one million studies we know a lot about education.

In this case most research supports one’s intuition that kindergarten helps kids’ later schooling. And all-day helps more than half-day.

The equity arguments: Prior boards had promised all-day.  We have been accepting money from the state for all-day (and spending it elsewhere).  Denying all-day to six of 17 schools creates substantial inequity for parents – and a skewing of enrollments.

Were there reasons not to vote for the proposal?  Absolutely.  Many laid out in my memo, the pages of this newspaper, and eloquently presented by opponents at last week’s board meeting.

It’s a public relations disaster.  Why wasn’t this done two years ago?  If this year, why not either before, or during, the budget cutting process?  How can we cut $700,000 and then find $300,000?  Why not after, rather than before, the board’s new goal setting and long range planning process?

All good questions.  And it takes a strong board member to act in the face of them.  But none affects the conclusions that (a) research supports the substantive value of an all-day program, (b) past promises, law, and equity support a decision now, and (c) nothing on the horizon suggests it will be any easier anytime soon.

I suffer no illusion that the applause following our vote was an endorsement of our process.  It demonstrated the approval of our result by those supporting all-day kindergarten. Different result, different response.

I think the result was correct. But one can reasonably argue the contrary.

It’s the process I find encouraging. The use of research, the substantive community involvement, the board’s responsiveness to arguments pro and con. Not perfect, but a substantial improvement over our landing on MARS.

Nicholas Johnson is a member of the Iowa City School Board.