Originally published in Deseret News. 

Partisan elections for the Utah State Board of Education have been found constitutional by the Utah Supreme Court. The court held that elected officials aren’t employees — a commonsense concept we intuitively understood.

Yet, a larger, simmering policy question continues to be asked: How should education be governed in Utah?

While parents are ultimately in charge of their children’s education, there are important factors to consider when addressing the political governance of education. Future reforms to governance ought to accomplish at least two goals: (1) provide clarity about governing bodies in education, and (2) give the governor a significant role in education policymaking.

Clarify governing bodies in education

Knowing who’s politically in charge of public education policymaking is a crucial ingredient to education success.

Unfortunately, even the recent Utah Supreme Court decision on partisan state school board races does not answer the bigger question: Who’s in charge of policymaking?

Is the governor in charge as Utah’s highest executive authority? Is the Utah Legislature in charge since it enacts all education laws? Or is the state school board in charge because it administers public schools?

Ideally, future governance reforms would establish a clearer relationship between the State Board of Education and the Legislature, and between the board and the governor. Clearly outlining which branch of our state government oversees the work done by the board would provide the public a sense of where the buck stops in education.

Without this public understanding, messages from the public to their leaders about policy can be ineffective, wrongly directed, and sometimes just messy.

For example, think about the anger spurred by the adoption of Common Core standards in the state (the Utah Core Standards). The standards — seen as federal intrusion by many — were adopted by the State Board of Education. But it was the governor who felt enough pressure from the public that he sent a letter to the board asking the entity to finally just dump the standards.

Why? Because the public believed the governor had the power to change education policy. Instead, the governor had to redirect that message to the proper entity for the public’s will to be realized.

Defining where the buck stops does not mean that we need an education czar with boundless authority. One of the virtues of American government is the dispersion of power in policymaking. We need different governing bodies that can impact the policymaking process and check one another, but we also need clarity about their respective powers.

With clearer governance comes better public participation.

Give the governor a role in education

Which brings us to the governor’s place in education. If the governor is already presumed to have a significant role in education policymaking — as is in fact the case in dozens of other U.S. states — why not give the governor such a role here?

Defining a role for the executive over the board can help realize the objectives outlined above: coherency about the relationship between governing entities and increased accountability for the public.

One way to accomplish this is simply to make the state school board a governor-appointed body. However, given the political capital spent enacting partisan school board elections and the Utah Supreme Court’s recent decision on that legislation, the prospects for moving to an appointed board seem dim at best.

But perhaps the governor could have a larger role in the selection of the state superintendent or be empowered to set the agenda of the state board. This latter role would be similar to the role that legislative leaders play in setting the agenda of legislative interim committees: requiring the study of certain items, requesting a committee recommend a policy solution on a given issue, etc.

Reforms like these would mean that when citizens vote for governor, they vote for education — as many assume anyway. And that would be a step toward better governance of public schools.