Parents, teachers, administrators and students look to the school board not only to set policy, but also to set an example.
The theatrics at Flemington-Raritan school board meetings are getting very old, very fast.
When tensions and voices rise, when the proceedings get so out of control that a board member feels compelled to call the police, you know you've entered the realm of the absurd.
It would be simply amusing, we'll admit, if the well being of the region's children were not at stake.
The latest scene played out at the Sept. 21 meeting at the J.P. Case Middle School, when a discussion over board member Alan Brewer's charges of alleged mishandling of mail turned ugly.
MORE: Board member says his rights were 'trampled' at meeting
Apparently determined to air his views over the objections of board President Bruce Davidson, Brewer jumped out of his chair, ran around the board table and began placing printed statements in front of each member.
Superintendent Maryrose Caulfield described his actions as intimidating. A school board member summoned the police, who sent an officer to investigate.
This could all be dismissed as internal squabbling if the incident had not followed close on the heels of an earlier board meeting, at which members displayed a stunning lack of sensitivity to the realities of living with mental illness.
At that August session, members tittered and jeered at the possibility that an elected state official was a patient at a private behavioral health care clinic. The exchange prompted a complaint by NAMI-NJ, the state chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
RELATED: School board's comments criticized by mental health advocates
Last summer, more fireworks broke out when board member Anna Fallon charged Brewer with endangering students by leaking security secrets to several people outside the board.
Fallon said sharing the district's security plan "has literally put the lives of each of our children and staff in jeopardy," while Brewer countered that the material was not really sensitive at all, and that he was trying to give Flemington leaders a heads up as the plans were being finalized.
Sadly, we already have a national model of how a dysfunctional deliberative body works - or rather, doesn't work. Can you say "Congress?"
We know too well that grandstanding, partisan politics and incessant finger-pointing fail to get the job done in Washington. Only a fool would think those antics would be any more effective on a local level.
Parents, teachers, administrators and students look to the school board not only to set policy, but also to set an example.
What are they to take away from these shenanigans, other than the conclusion that they are being led by people who put their own interests ahead of the constituents they were elected to serve?