School Board Quotes & Sayings

Parent-Teacher Conference
At the parent-teacher conference,
my father made a scene.
He scared my fifth-grade teacher,
with his mask from Halloween.
She showed him all my science grades
and said she was concerned,
but he just stuck his tongue out
when my teacher's back was turned.
He drew a monster on the board
and claimed it was her twin.
He even shook her soda,
which expolded on her chin.
My angry teacher crossed her arms
and said, This meeting's done!
I now see where he gets it from
you act just like your son! — Darren Sardelli

Once I was asked if I had to take a test with the school board to prove I was competent to teach my children. My answer, "God made me competent to teach my children when He ordained me to be their mother. — Jamerrill Stewart

My father was a truck driver. That's where it all started, and academically I was a disaster at school. My cousin got his name on the honour board; I, at Melbourne High School, I carved mine on the desk. — Lindsay Fox

Next time you leave the house, think about who might be watching you. Do you pass a traffic camera? Do the shops you go to have security cameras? Is there a camera on board your train or bus? What about in your school? The cafes and restaurants where you eat? Street corners? Subways? And who is on the other side of that camera? A private security guard? The police? The government? How can you tell? — Leah Wilson

A surfer is poised on a wave on his board, cutting quickly to the left. He'll always be there, in that moment. He's never left it. He had no birth, he didn't go to school, he didn't purchase the board; none of those things ever were. — Frederick Lenz

When I went to school every teacher had a BOARD of education. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

I don't think I'm entirely on board with the 'do what you truly want to do' school of thought. Not without a little more nuance. There has to be an anchor in the wide-open space. Otherwise, 'doing what you truly want' isn't an authentic attempt at exploration -- it's just another hyper-individualistic credo masquerading as something grand. I mean we're all gung ho about pursuing personal freedom, but why do we want it? If we never constructively apply it to something beyond ourselves, and if it doesn't deepen our sense of connection and humanity, then what's the point? — Clara Bensen

If you go by a school and the kids don't whistle, back to the drawing board. — Harley Earl

I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there. — Ellen Goodman

A novel, or so-called "fiction," if deeply researched and conscientiously written, might well contain as much truth as a high-school history textbook approved by a state board of education. But having been designated "historical fiction" by its publisher, it is presumed to be less reliably true than that textbook. If fiction were defined as "the opposite of truth," then much of the content of many approved historical textbooks could be called "historical fiction."
But fiction is not the opposite of truth. Fiction means "created by imagination." And there is plenty of evidence everywhere in literature and art that imagination can get as close to truth as studious fact-finding can. — James Alexander Thom

School boards are, for the most part,made up of political wannabes who see a board seat as a stepping stone for political office, or well-meaning parents who represent an ethnic group or geography, or have some other narrow interests. Few people on them understand what governance is about. — Eli Broad

The people are supposed to read books in these times of the School Board and, therefore, they do not need living speech. We are glad that the people should read, but much of what they read which is best worth reading was first heard from the pulpit! We know of no rivalry between the printed word and the preached Word - it is often the same thing. But I reckon that the most of you who have been converted to God will say that it was not what you read, but what you heard which was used of the Holy Spirit for your conversion! When heart speaks to heart with accents of emotion, it is somehow different from the paper. Some Brothers read their sermons and I do not condemn them, but I know that most of the people feel a kind of chill creeping over them as they hear the leaves rustle. It may be a prejudice, but I know that nine out of 10 are numbed by the foolscap for the reading. — Anonymous

I've been on the board of UCLA Film and TV School, and I went to UCLA. I realized that the same movie theater that was there when I went to school, 30 years later is the same movie theater in the same condition. There was an opportunity to refurbish an existing room, and I jumped at the opportunity. — Darren Star

Pete Berman sized up his competition like a predator lining up its prey. Gerry Williams dribbled once with his left hand, stopped on a dime, and nailed an open 15-footer. He had played on the Fellingwood Varsity Basketball Team since his freshman year, and was now a 16 year-old boy in a man's body. Pete sat on a board of the old splinter-ridden, wooden stands fixed on Gerry, but he was unable to defend his turf. His team was losing badly again, and the waiting was pure agony. — Phil Wohl

The breathtaking inanity of the [school] Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. — John E. Jones III

The solution to the problem of poor performance scores had been a new system of grading that would encourage students to stay in school as well as improve their self-esteem. Beyond these important, admirable goals, it also had a more immediate purpose: it would undoubtedly reduce the school's notoriously high failure rate, which had become an embarrassment to the school and to the school board. Under the plan, equal weight was given to class participation (which to some teachers meant simply showing up, because how on earth were you supposed to quantify participation?), homework, weekly tests, and a final exam at the end of every six-week period. A student could flunk every weekly test as well as the final exam and still pass a course for that period. — H. G. Bissinger

At the Auditorium Building on September 8, the labor movement hosted a rally to organize against the Loeb Rule. Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor told the crowd that businessmen were engaged in a campaign "to eliminate men of brain and heart and sympathy and character" from the teaching force. U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis Post, a former member of Mayor Dunne's progressive school board, spoke about the threat the Teachers Federation had long posed to corporate interests more interested in lowering their own taxes than in improving the education of other people's children. "All over this country, in one form or another, it is a fight between what has been called the Interests, the special interests, and the interests of the public, the interests of the common people. That is the fight. — Dana Goldstein

I'd walk into the school, smell that institutional smell of the tomato soup, peanut butter, disinfectant, and boys room. Pass the lunchroom, see the familiar lunchroom lady with the white dress and net on her hair. At the end of 50 years of distinguished service the Board of Education gives her a bronze net - with her name on it. It stems from the Board of Education rule to keep her hair out of the food. — Robert Klein

I used to tell the story about as a young man in high school one of the professors came in and put a broad white sheet on the board with a dot in the right hand corner and said, "Boys, what do you see?" And we all shouted, a black dot. He stood back and said, "not a single one of you saw the broad white sheet, you all saw the black dot." He went on to tell us to focus on the broader picture, don't focus on the negative. — Kofi Annan

Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the storm tracks
of the milky way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow. — Stanley Kunitz

In 1996, Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' was removed from classrooms after a school board passed a 'prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction' act. Apparently, a young female character disguised as a boy was a danger to the youth of Merrimack, New Hampshire. — Richard LaGravenese

Before parents accept the wisdeom of a school board to cut school librarians, they should ask: Will my child graduate with a 21st-century resume, or a 19th-century transcript? ... As the information landscape becomes ever more complex, why does a school district want to abandon its professional guides to it? — Mark Moran

Politics of Friendship is, in other words, only a book between covers. For the real text, you must enter the classroom, put yourself to school, as a preview of the formation of collectivities. A single "teacher's" "students," flung out into the world and time, is, incidentally, a real-world example of the precarious continuity of a Marxism "to come," aligned with grassroots counterglobalizing activism in the global South today, with little resemblance to those varieties of "Little Britain" leftism that can take on board the binary opposition of identity politics and humanism, shifting gears as the occasion requires. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

The worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle. This pattern holds up across the board. The Belgian medical students with the lowest grades have unusually high giver scores, but so do the students with the highest grades. Over the course of medical school, being a giver accounts for 11 percent higher grades. Even in sales, I found that the least productive salespeople had 25 percent higher giver scores than average performers - but so did the most productive salespeople. The top performers were givers, and they averaged 50 percent more annual revenue than the takers and matchers. Givers dominate the bottom and the top of the success ladder. Across occupations, if you examine the link between reciprocity styles and success, the givers are more likely to become champs - not only chumps. — Adam M. Grant

He checked the battered old watch that had once been Fabian Prewett's. "It's nearly eleven, you'd better get on board." "Don't forget to give Neville our love!" Ginny told James as she hugged him. "Mum! I can't give a professor love!" "But you know Neville - " James rolled his eyes. "Outside, yeah, but at school he's Professor Longbottom, isn't he? I can't walk into Herbology and give — J.K. Rowling

I think we have lost our way when people like the [board of] governors and the CEO of the NYSE fail to realize they have a duty to the rest of us to act as exemplars. You do not want your first-grade school teacher to be fornicating on the floor or drinking alcohol in the closet and, similarly, you do not want your stock exchange to be setting the wrong moral example. — Charlie Munger

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board. — Mark Twain

The role of the schoolmaster is to collect little plastic lumps of human dough from private households and shape them on the social kneading board. — Edward Alsworth Ross

As a school board member, I might have particular views about the ways we might increase the economics curriculum in a local high school, but I'm not sure I should mandate that for the entire country. — Zephyr Teachout

Connie Heermann is a Freedom Writer teacher. I believe she represents the best of what dedicated teachers can be because she chose to serve her students, not her school board. — Richard LaGravenese

We had rising student achievement across the board because high standards, robust accountability, ending social promotion in third grade, real school choice across the board, challenging the teachers union and beating them is the way to go. — Jeb Bush

Because everybody on the school board, and the railroad, and the PTA and paper mill had to be somebody's mother or father, whether really or as a member of a category; and there was a point at which the reflex to their covering warmth, protection, effectiveness against bad dreams, bruised heads and simple loneliness took over and made worthwhile anger with them impossible. — Thomas Pynchon

Dark, was banned by the Irish state censor for obscenity. The story was set, as so much of McGahern's later fiction would be, in isolated rural Ireland and dealt with the bleak consequences of parental and clerical child abuse. On the instructions of the Archbishop of Dublin, McGahern was sacked from his job as a primary school teacher. He later left the country. Despite these apparent setbacks, McGahern's literary friends reassured him that all this was a wonderful opportunity in terms of publicity and sales. Remember Joyce and Beckett being forced overseas? This was Irish literary history repeating itself, and preparations were soon being made to mount a campaign against the anachronistic and widely derided censorship laws with McGahern as the figurehead.
Sign up for the Bookmarks email
Read more

McGahern agreed that the situation was indeed absurd, and says that even as an adolescent reader he had nothing but contempt for the censorship board. — John McGahern

I was very competitive growing up. I can't even play chess anymore because I used to play tournament chess in school. There's too much sense memory of sitting in front of a chess board and getting super intense about it. It's ruined the game for me. — Chris Hardwick

To all the students - no school report card can tell you weather you can achieve your dream or not. Know your purpose, know your dream, know your vision, stay focused, do your job and do not listen to anyone including your report card. Don't let the board results or rankings bother you. Do what you are passionate about, work harder, do better but don't let your mark sheet tell you anything. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

Sign board outside my office - NO ADMISSION FOR ADMISSION — Amit Abraham

We have to reach out to churches and schools and help people understand science, and we have to build rapport between scientists and people of faith. Then once we get that understanding and rapport built, then everyone will be on board with climate change. — Katharine Hayhoe

But the best thing Washington can do for education is realize that our role is limited. Washington must keep its promises, but let those who know our childrens' names- parents, teachers and school board members- make education decisions. — Mark Kennedy

Any place where you have to deal with many social actors like a school - you have the parents, the Ministry of Education, the school board, and the teachers - you need all kinds of sets and rules. You're trying to foresee anything that can happen and everything becomes really rigid. They don't want to talk about death because they don't want to overwhelm the children, but that has already happened, so you're not going to overwhelm them more. — Philippe Falardeau

I was on the San Diego school board for 4 years, where I watched children successfully matriculate into elementary schools from Head Start programs from all around our city. — Bob Filner

Parents teach in the toughest school in the world - The School for Making People. You are the board of education, the principal, the classroom teacher, and the janitor ... — Virginia Satir

That first responsibility as a school board member - meals for latch-key children - was absolutely critical in my understanding of the extraordinary problems of poverty. — Richard Lugar

We need strong school board members who know right from wrong. The Bible, being the only true source of right and wrong, should be the guide of board members. Only godly Christians can truly qualify for this critically important position ... — Robert Simonds

I am honored to serve on the Board of Visitors for Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Being the first board member from Latin America, I hope to provide insight into the economical, social and political issues facing the region, and continue to grow and strengthen this prestigious institution. — Ricardo Salinas Pliego

The educational resources provided by a child's fellow students are more important for his achievement than are the resources provided by the school board. — James S. Coleman

I don't size up their grades or their board scores. Because in America today, that's just an advantage certain people have. I size up the give and take, the speed of thinking, what I perceive as ambition. I say, 'Tell me about your high school jobs.' And I love people who worked in coffee shops who were waiters and waitresses. — Mickey Drexler

Police: NY bus driver drove drunk with 35 students on board CORTLANDT, N.Y. (AP) - Police say a school bus driver was driving drunk with 35 students on board when she sideswiped a utility pole in suburban New York. It happened Monday as 56-year-old Mary Coletti was taking students to Walter Panas High School in Cortdandt. Authorities say she sideswiped the pole around 7 a.m. They say her blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit of .08 percent. A few students suffered minor injuries. Lakeland School District Superintendent George Stone tells The Journal News Coletti's bus driver's license has been revoked. Coletti was arraigned Monday and sent to jail on $1,000 bail. She's due back in court May 18. It's unclear if she has an attorney. Posted: — Anonymous

I was on the board at my children's school in Phoenix: I was Mr. Daddy Daycare. — Grant Hill

Two years ago, George Bush felt prompted to address this issue. More spending on public education, said the president, isn't "the best answer." Mr. Bush went on to caution parents of poor children who see money "as a cure" for education problems. "A society that worships money ... ," said the president, "is a society in peril." The president himself attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts - a school that spends $11,000 yearly on each pupil, not including costs of room and board. If money is a wise investment for the education of a future president at Andover, it is no less so for the child of poor people in Detroit. But the climate of the times does not encourage this belief, and the president's words will surely reinforce that climate. — Jonathan Kozol

So the rich kids aren't the alpha group of the school. The next most likely demographic would be the church kids: They're plentiful, and they are definitely interested in school domination. However, that strength
the will to dominate
is also their greatness weakness, because they spend so much time trying to convince you to hang out with them, and the way they try to do that is by inviting you over to their church. 'We've got cookies and board games,' they say, or that sort of thing. 'We just got a Wii set up!' Something about it always seems a little off. Eventually, you realize: These same exact sentences are also said by child predators. — Jesse Andrews

A Michigan school board trustee has resigned after a flippant comment about "shooting" children with food allergies. — Anonymous

We do need curriculum reform. And it should happen at the state and local level. That is where educational policy belongs, because if a parent is unhappy with what their child is being taught in school, they can go to that local school board or their state legislature, or their governor and get it changed. — Marco Rubio

I taught public school for 26 years, but I just can't do it anymore. For years I asked the school board to let me teach a curriculum that doesn't hurt kids, but they always had other fish to fry. If you hear of a job where I don't have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything, but blind obedience. — John Taylor Gatto

C'mon kids! Wake up and smell the CO2! Take over your administration building, occupy your university president's office, or storm in on the next meeting of your college's board of trustees until they agree to make your school carbon neutral. — Thomas Friedman

In law school, I earned the respect of professors and served on the editorial board of 'The Yale Law Journal.' — Randall Kennedy

Trees constitute the environmental quality committee - running air and water purification service 24-7. They're on every task force, from the historical society picnic to the highway department, school board, and library. When it comes to civic beautification, they alone create the crimson fall with little recognition. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Sign on a High School bulletin board in Dallas: Free every Monday through Friday-knowledge. Bring your own containers. — Charles E. McKenzie

If you want to pray at a town hall meeting or a school board meeting or in the halls of Congress, that ought to be acceptable in the United States. — Tim Walberg

Many people avoid talking about death, but it never bothered me. The principal of my high school was an excellent teacher. One day he was writing on the blackboard when he suddenly turned around and said 'Life is a great adventure and death is the greatest adventure of all,' then went back to the board. I have never feared death since then. — Kathryn Tucker Windham

LAURENE POWELL. Savvy and good-humored Penn graduate, went to Goldman Sachs and then Stanford Business School, married Steve Jobs in 1991. GEORGE RILEY. Jobs's Memphis-born friend and lawyer. ARTHUR ROCK. Legendary tech investor, early Apple board member, Jobs's father figure. JONATHAN "RUBY" RUBINSTEIN. Worked — Walter Isaacson

I knew one boy who passed through several schools a dunce and a laughing-stock; the National Board and the Intermediate Board had sat in judgment upon him and had damned him as a failure before men and angels. Yet a friend and fellow-worker of mine discovered that he was gifted with a wondrous sympathy for nature, that he loved and understood the ways of plants, that he had a strange minuteness and subtlety of observation - that, in short, he was the sort of boy likely to become an accomplished botanist. — Padraic Pearse

On the other hand, who would be a more dedicated gay-basher than a gay school board member? look at congress. — John L'Heureux

Art history became an A-level option at my school the year I started sixth form. This happened because another student and I cajoled and bullied the head of the art department into arranging it with the examination board. — Sarah Hall

On the TV and in the newspapers all we hear and read is 'live your life or the terrorists win' and it sounds great, I'm all for that, except my kids won't ask for a bathroom pass because the faculty facilities are on the first floor of the building and the MPs patrolling the second floor won't go downstairs on their shift - so I've got middle school kids afraid to take a piss because there might be a soldier in the stall next to them carrying a loaded M- 16 - but hell yes, I'm all for 'live your life' and screw the terrorists, and screw all the countries who harbor and support them. I'm on board with that, except I've got these kids who stay home now, because they're scared riding a bus with soldiers carrying guns, knowing that one soldier isn't enough, so there's a military truck full of soldiers with even bigger guns following the bus 'just in case. — Tucker Elliot

I was always involved in the arts from a young age. I started studying classical piano at age four as a student of the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music. — Monica Raymund

As a school board we felt it's an unfair expense to families. The lawsuit has a certain logic to it - if you have free public education, you can't put these things on top of it. It defeats the purpose. — Steve Martin

Especially in local elections, because hardly anybody pays attention to those - but it's really important who's mayor and who's on the city council, county commissioners, sheriffs, district attorney, and of course the school board. — Jello Biafra

No, no. She's a career woman. She has a full-time nanny. I think she just imported a new one from France. She likes European stuff. Renata doesn't have time to help at the school. She has board meetings to attend. Whenever you talk to her she's just been to a board meeting, or she's on her way back from a board meeting, or she's preparing for a board meeting. I mean, how often do these boards have to meet? — Liane Moriarty

The following "Rules for Female Teachers" were posted by the school board of one town in Massachusetts: Do not get married. Do not leave town at any time without permission of the school board. Do not keep company with men. Be home between the hours of 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. Do not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. Do not smoke. Do not get into a carriage with any man except your father or brother. Do not dress in bright colors. Do not dye your hair. Do not wear any dress more than two inches above the ankle. — Howard Zinn

Buses come and go. People get off and walk quickly, maybe because of the cold. Others board slowly, not wanting to get home, to work, or to school. But no one shows any anger or enthusiasm; they're not happy or sad, just poor souls mechanically carrying out the mission that the universe assigned on the day they were born. — Paulo Coelho

I learned very early on that it's necessary but not sufficient for scientists to go to school board meetings and say, "We shouldn't be teaching creationism." Being right doesn't mean it'll pass. — Eugenie Scott

But if you really want to get involved in making a difference, you can stay at home with your family and have a job and make a reasonable living without having to be on an airplane all of the time, then you ought to go back home and run for School Board. — Birch Bayh

On the board, Mr. Beery had written "Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it." I wasn't sure if this was meant to be inspirational, thematic, or a joke about making sure to study. — Gabrielle Zevin

Mandatory showers had been dropped in the fall, when Lilah Porter protested the archaic practice by staging a sit-in in the gym, where she set up a projector and played the shower scene from Carrie in a continuous loop until the school board caved. — Marlene Perez

To the Richmond Leader in 1966 when the school board banned her novel: "Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that 'To Kill a Mockingbird' spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is 'immoral' has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink. — Harper Lee

We lived in Northern Quebec, and the nearest school was thirty miles away, so my mother took on the task of home schooling me. She spoke to some friends, received some instructions from the provincial school board, and found some interesting books that perhaps I might find useful. — Willard Boyle

In the eyes of her oldest friends and colleagues and extended family, she wasn't a painfully thin seventy-five-year-old gray haired woman dying of cancer- she was a grade school class president, the young friend you gossiped with, a date or double date, someone to share a tent with in Darfur, a fellow election monitor in Bosnia, a mentor, a teacher you'd laughed within a classroom or a faculty lounge, or the board member you'd groaned with after a contentious meeting — Will Schwalbe