conflict of interest on school boards

Daily Herald (Bob Susnjara) reported Illinois Association of School Boards is lobbying to exclude students from being eligible to run for school boards because of "conflict of interest" issues.

I found the story linked from Capitol Fax Blog where Rich Miller asked readers for their opinions.

In April one high school student in Peoria was elected to the board of education. While I think that reducing conflict of interest in school politics is a good thing, I think IASB is behaving badly in this case.

If one added up all the conflict of interest problems in the whole state of Illinois that are caused by students serving on school boards, it would be far less of a problem than the conflict of interest issues at any one of a number of Proviso school districts.

IASB should quit wasting its energy on straw man problems. The fact that IASB can overlook serious problems and waste time on non-issues detracts from the credibility of the organization.

I made some comments at Capitol Fax Blog.