Editorials

You would have thought that Dr. Thomas Corts, interim chancellor of the state two-year college system, had proposed closing all the system's branch campuses the way the State Board of Education reacted to his suggestion that community colleges and technical schools be put under a separate governing board.

Board members must have taken it personally, as an indictment of their own failings, rather than an accurate assessment of the shortcomings of the system, because the simple fact is that like so many good ideas, this one will die in the Legislature.

Why?

Because combining the two-year institutions with the public schools creates a political powerhouse that no one wants to take on.

When the first junior colleges were created back during the George Wallace years, senior colleges and universities looked on them like red-headed stepchildren. Rejected by the institutions with which they had (or should have had) the most in common, there was little protest when they were lumped in with the public schools.

In those early years, with many of the junior-college administrators and teachers only recently being employed in local high schools, there was a natural bond between the systems. And since the junior-college system began small, it was no particular strain on the State Board of Education to administer both.

Under this arrangement all seemed to prosper. With the powerful Alabama Education Association lobbying, the public schools got their share of the pie. And since the two-year institutions were under the same board, the two-year institutions got what the public schools got. Little wonder that many, if not most, teachers and administrators in the two-year system belong to and support the AEA. When AEA lobbies for the public schools, it lobbies for the two-year institutions as well.

So it follows that legislators with ties to the public schools and legislators with ties to the two-year schools work together for the good of their combined interests. Today nearly one-third of state lawmakers have received — or their relatives have received — compensation from an institution governed by the State Board of Education. Break the two-year colleges off and put them under their own board and this coalition would be weakened.

So, really, there is no reason for the State Board of Education to feel threatened by Corts' suggestion.

If the education of our children was the issue, or even if the efficient administration of our schools was paramount in the minds of the legislators who would have to approve the change, a separate board would be the way to go.

But education and efficiency are not the legislators' main concern.

So there will be no separate board.