Dr. David Dulio, Professor of Political Science at Oakland University and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement, explains the context of political polarization, how government representatives define their role as delegates or trustees, the impact of salient issues on their roles, and its application to school level politics. Referencing Richard Fenno’s seminal study of the home style of Congress Members (1978), Dr. Dulio cites for school leaders the three behaviors essential to building trust with the community: qualification, identification and empathy. He recommends increased transparency of process and information as a response plan for difficult educational issues that might divide the community. ddulio@oakland.edu , https://oakland.edu/polisci/cce
Dr. David Dulio, Professor of Political Science at Oakland University and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement, is often asked by local and state media to comment on how to best address contentious issues and work through community concerns. In this podcast, he provides perspective to the polarized political environment, explains how government representatives at all levels define their roles relative to the salience of the issue to their constituents, and recommends to school leaders the three behaviors that build trust with constituents. He advises increased transparency in process and information when responding to a potentially divisive educational issue.
Dr. Dulio offers insight into the origin of the Center for Civic Engagement. “I arrived at Oakland University in 2002 from Washington D.C., where I did graduate work at American University and worked on Capitol Hill for about a year as a Congressional Fellow, through a fellowship program with the American Political Science Association. When I was a graduate student I watched my mentor, James Thurber, at American University create the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, bringing people together to talk about important issues. When I got to Oakland University I continued on the trajectory of a normal academic, but always had in the back of my mind that I’d like to start something like that. Fast forward 15 years, the idea of a Center on Civic Engagement fit with the University’s strategic goal and mission. What really drove the creation of the Center which launched in 2018 was recognizing that people don't know much about how their government system works in the United States, and more importantly, the clear indication and evidence that Americans can't talk to each other anymore. ”
“Polarization is one of the buzzwords today and the use of it is becoming greater, when in fact divisions in American politics are nothing new. Take the example of presidential job approval and we can see major division in terms of how people view presidents as far back as the 1960's; even John Kennedy saw some great polarization during his presidency. A lot of people think that it's just Trump that created this great divide in how people view the president. Certainly, Trump was polarizing and was someone who saw very divergent views of his job as president. Towards the end of his time in office, only 7% of Democrats had a favorable view of his job approval, whereas about 85% of Republicans did. And that might seem jarring, however, at the end of Barack Obama's time in office; he was only in the low teens in job approval among Republicans and had over 90% job approval from Democrats. The one time we see some more general agreements about the job the president's doing was Jimmy Carter, who had low approval ratings from everybody. When the president's doing well among one group of partisans, it’s not often that we see him doing well among the other group of partisans. A more important point is that disagreement, that divergence is long-lasting.”
“Polarization in terms of schools occurs because it's become a salient issue. Some data from Gallup at the end of last year showed nationally only 1% of Americans mentioned education as the most important issue the country was facing. As folks think about masking in schools, vaccine requirements, the school board issues, maybe it bubbles up a little more. However when that issue becomes very, very salient and when it becomes relevant to their lives in a very pointed way, it becomes a huge issue. Whether parents should have a say in what children learn in school galvanized and crystallized the issue of education for a lot of Virginians. It changed that gubernatorial race between Terry McAuliffe (D) and Glenn Youngkin (R), and it changed policymaking in Virginia in a lot of ways.”
How does this apply to local schools and school boards? Dr. Dulio explained, “Every school district is an elected government and school boards are the governmental entity representing the people. There are two dominant models for how people perceive their job as representatives. One is the delegate model of representation, where somebody who is a representative acts as if his or her constituents are present. The constituents are simply delegating the authority to cast a vote or make a decision, rather than empowering the representative to do something other than what the constituents want. The second model is the trustee model, where the representative may listen to constituents’ views, but they will use their own talents, opinions, competencies, beliefs, to decide what to do and how to vote. Whether we have a delegate or representative model depends upon the individual representative and how they see their job; the issue; and here is where we get back to the issue of education, the context surrounding the issue; and how important it is to the constituents. How important or how relevant it is at the time will depend or will dictate in some cases how a representative will look at that issue.”
How does a person who is in a school classroom, a principal's office, or central office, respond to these different models when you think about engaging a community with diverse interests and opinions? Dr. Dulio expounded on the point about saliency. “If things are going well or if times are good, a school board member or somebody who works for the district, may approach things as a trustee because they see no reason to do otherwise, and importantly the public might also see it that way, and they're okay with that. If things start to become more salient where more members of the public are thinking about it, they may change their expectation for that representative, whether it's an elected school board member or for a superintendent or a principal where they are now demanding, ‘You work for me. You better listen to what we think. You better listen to our input’. If somebody has been approaching their role as a trustee the shift in that expectation can be jarring, taking them off guard. It might cause some of the biggest problems, where they’re now forced to think about their job very, very differently and even some of the decisions they make.”
For superintendents and school leaders, Dr. Dulio presented strategies for building trust, referencing Dr. Richard Fenno’s seminal study and subsequent book, Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. “Dr. Fenno convinced a handful of U.S. House Members to let him follow them around, observing their behavior. He called this method of research 'soaking and poking', soaking it all in and poking around. He noticed that the most important aspect of the home style of a Member of Congress was how a Member presents themselves to their constituents. Fenno argued that the most important aspect of the presentation of self is trust. Members have to build trust with his or her constituents and they do that by focusing on three things: qualification, identification, and empathy. First, do you have the competencies, the skills, the requisite what it takes to do the job? Second, do you have a connection with the folks? The connection might be wearing the right T-shirt with the high school mascot on it or having a connection to one of the sports teams or one of the clubs. Third, do you understand the needs of the constituents?”
“Achieving these three things for a superintendent or a school board member will help immunize them against the pressures they’re feeling today.” Dr. Maxfield pointed out that not every superintendent has the luxury of having built up that history of empathy or history of identification. What can they do beyond understanding these qualities which are so vital? Dr. Dulio answered, “Beyond that, one key thing for me is being as transparent as you can in two ways: in your processes and in the information that you have. If something is starting to bubble up, share more information because if you don’t, given the Internet and given how good some folks have gotten at F.O.I. requests, someone will find out. If they find it out before you share it, you're on the defensive and you've lost control of the message. While there are some things that shouldn't be made public, folks should show a good faith effort to be open with the public and say, here’s what we're thinking."
“The vast majority of time folks in a school district are probably going to let the professionals: the superintendents, the principals, do their thing. But if something that's really important bubbles up and gets on the public's radar, that's going to change. They're not going to be able to operate as they would in normal times because they are going to have people asking questions, seeking information, looking for answers to questions about what's going on in school, and what are you doing with my kids. If school leaders are just more prepared for that to come, they're in a better position to respond. It can be a sudden change and sort of jerky reactions where they've gone from everyone letting us do our thing, to beating down the door.”
The final advice: “Along with continuing to build trust in the community, it is important to put systems in place with transparency and vehicles for two-way communication as part of the culture of the community and the organization’s relationship to it. As school leaders, planning during the best of times serves you in the more challenging times”.
Dr. David Dulio ddulio@oakland.edu
Center for Civic Engagement https://oakland.edu/polisci/cce/
Fenno, Richard F., Home Style: House Members in Their Districts, Little & Brown, 1978.
Bob Maxfield:
Welcome to Podcast for Leaderful Schools coming to you almost live from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, actually from the Galileo Institute in the School of Education and Human Services. This is Bob Maxfield and I'm joined today by my wonderful co-host, Dr. Suzanne Klein. Sue, how are you this early February Michigan morning?
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Suzanne Klein:
All is well, Bob and actually all is great because I've got some wonderful conversations with some of our doctoral students ahead this afternoon to hear about their educational research, so life is good. We got a reply from someone who had seen one of our more recent podcasts saying, right place, right time, was going to learn more about instructional rounds, and it was going to help him in his principalship role.
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Bob Maxfield:
That's exactly what we keep hoping for. So we've had a series that the last 12 months or so dealing is with what's life in schools like during the pandemic, and what if we ever emerge from it, have we learned and what can we do differently? But today we're going to approach it from a slightly different angle; we're going to be talking to Dr. David Dulio, who is a Professor of Political Science at Oakland University and also the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement.
We brought Dave in a couple weeks ago to meet with a group of superintendents to help understand what's going on as we deal and as superintendents do their job in often divided communities during these very uncertain times. Dave had such wonderful insights that we thought it would be worth exploring those further in a podcast. Please join us in welcoming Dr. David Dulio although before we do anything Dave, tell us a little bit about your background, how did you get to the point where you are doing what you're currently doing at Oakland University?
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
Sure, thanks Bob for the invitation; it's nice to be with you and Suzanne. It's great to talk to you and happy to share some thoughts on what I think is a really important topic. I have been at O.U. for almost 20 years; came in the summer of 2002 from Washington D.C. where I both did graduate work at American University and worked on Capitol Hill for about a year as a Congressional fellow. The fellowship program that I did was through the Political Science National Society, the American Political Science Association, where they set us loose and told us to go get jobs on the Hill. There were about seven or eight of us in that fellowship class, and it was to this day one of the best experiences that I've ever had. It has informed me as a researcher and more importantly as a teacher. I still tell stories to this day about what I saw on Capitol Hill; it helps me understand politics, it helps me understand Congress in a way that reading the literature doesn't, and really what my professional life has been was shaped there, and it connects to the Center for Civic Engagement. When I was a graduate student my mentor James Thurber, at American University ran a Center that he started from the ground up. I saw him do that and learned and was socialized into the profession watching him be entrepreneurial with these sorts of things; bringing people together to talk about important issues related to what that Center was about, the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.
So when I got to O.U. (Oakland University) I continued on the trajectory of a normal academic, but always had in the back of my mind that I’d like to start something like that. Fast forward 15 years or so and we had an administration that was certainly open to the idea of a Center focused on civic engagement. It fit with the University's strategic goals, and it fit with the mission. What really drove it was me noticing two things or things being crystallized, one of which relates to what we're going to talk about. The first one was that civic literacy stinks on campus and off. People don't know enough about how their…Well, I shouldn't say it that way; that makes it sound judgmental right? People don't know much about how their government works, how the system works in the United States, so we want to try to do something about that. But more importantly really, is the clear indication and evidence that Americans can't talk to each other anymore. As soon as somebody has a different opinion they automatically become evil, they automatically become the devil, they automatically become the enemy right? And that's bad for our politics, that's bad for solving problems, that's bad for school systems. So we launched in 2018, and we’re going up on four years here, concluding our third year and we're going to keep doing what we're doing.
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Bob Maxfield:
Well, that is a perfect introduction to our first question because that's what brings us together. I’d like to just give you a chance to share your thoughts that the divisions of polarization are influencing all aspects of our lives today. And I think you've already hinted this isn't exactly a new phenomenon and yet to people in education it seems like it is, and certainly it seems louder today than it's been. Talk a little bit about that in terms of the context of past and present.
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
Sure, I think polarization is one of the buzzwords today, and I think that the use of it is becoming greater. We hear more about it, when in fact polarization is nothing new. Divisions in American politics are nothing new, and if we just take one example of that, presidential job approval, we can see division as far back as... And when I say division, I mean major division in terms of how people view presidents as far back as the 1960's; even John Kennedy saw some great polarization during his presidency. But if we go back, and a lot of people think that it's just Trump, that created this great divide in how people view the president. Certainly Trump was polarizing and Trump was someone who saw very divergent views of his job as president. We know towards the end of his time in office, only 7% of Democrats had a favorable view of his job approval, whereas about 85% of Republicans did.
And that might seem jarring and then maybe it is however, at the end of Barack Obama's time in office, he was only in the low teens in job approval among Republicans and had over 90% job approval from Democrats. If you go back and go through the years of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and George H. Bush, Ronald Reagan, all the way back, the one time we see maybe some more general agreements about the job the president's doing was Jimmy Carter and that wasn’t because job approval was high from everybody. Nobody liked Carter I mean it was his… He had low approval ratings from everybody. It's not like when the president's doing well among one group of partisans, that we often see him doing well among the other group of partisans; that's not the case at all, and a more important point really is that disagreement, that divergence is long-lasting.
I think today that polarization in terms of schools is more because it's become a salient issue. And there's some data from Gallup that we have that tells us that even at the end of last year, November-ish, nationally there wasn't a great deal of concern about education as a sort of top tier issue for a lot of the public. Only 1% of Americans mentioned education as the most important issue the country was facing and that was an open-ended question. You can make the case where if you had given people a list, maybe more would have picked out education as they think about things that were going on in their life. Not to get polarizing but you know as folks think about masking in schools, vaccine requirements, the school board issues maybe it bubbles up a little more. But when people are asked in an open-ended way, very few people mention education as an issue. However when that issue becomes very, very salient, when it becomes important in their life, when it becomes relevant to their life in a very pointed way, it becomes a huge issue. We don't have to look much farther than the gubernatorial election in Virginia last year where Glenn Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe. I think the issue of education changed that race, changed that campaign when Terry McAuliffe said something to the effect of ‘I don't think parents should have much say as to what their kids learn in school’. Well, people just went bonkers with that and I think it sunk him. I think that was, I think Politico or one of the D.C. publications called it “the gaffe of the year”. And you know, aside from it being a mistake, and a misstep from a campaign perspective, it just galvanized and crystallized the issue of education for a lot of Virginians. And as I said it changed that race and it changed policymaking in Virginia in a lot of ways.
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Suzanne Klein:
Dave, you bring us to our next question which is right where you just ended your sentence. The whole notion of policymaking in a local community and what rests with the school board, and how the school board and school district, its leadership, obviously, as well as teachers engage with the public has been in the news, for a variety of reasons over the last several years. This whole notion of how school boards and the public interact has been an interesting topic to follow along. In your conversation with superintendents about a week ago, you talked about how that whole role as a board member can vary depending on the times and depending on the politics, and also the polarization. Would you step into that a bit again, because that was a fascinating conversation? These listeners to the podcast I expect would also find that helpful.
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
Sure you know, I think that we have to start thinking about that by taking a step back and asking or thinking about what are school boards? And even as I said to the superintendent's, “What is a superintendent?” And you could argue with me on the superintendent piece given how they get their job, but school boards are elected representatives. They are representatives of the people, they are one of …Here's a little tidbit for your listeners. How many governments do you think exist in the United States? How many governmental entities? The U.S. House of Representatives is one, U.S. Senate is another, the Michigan State House is one, and the Michigan State Senate is another. How many governments do you think exist in the United States? Take a guess Bob or Suzanne.
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Suzanne Klein:
Well, I know that there are plus or minus 600 public school districts just in our state, so I'm multiplying that by 50 states and getting a very large number just for a local school board. That's not Mayors, City Council folks, and other kinds of elected officials in a local...
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Bob Maxfield:
100,000
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
You're both really on the right track. There’re 80,000 separate governments and 500,000 elected officials in the United States. But to your point Suzanne, every one of those school districts is an elected government, and school boards are that governmental entity representing the people. And so, if we think about them as representative governments, the concept then of representation comes up and how do people perceive their job as representatives. There are a number of different models of representation that political scientists will talk about; I see two of them as relevant here, and I think they're the dominant forms of representation, dominant models of representation.
One is the delegate model of representation, where somebody who is a representative follows or acts as if his or her constituents are present. They do what they are told; they reflect the constituency. If a representative follows this role, this model, they will or might rely on public opinion and say to themselves, if 65% of my constituents want me to vote for this that's what I'm going to do, or if 75% want me to vote against this, that's what I'm going to do. They act as if their constituents were right next to them and where the constituents are simply delegating the authority to cast a vote or make a decision, rather than empowering them to do something other than what the constituents want.
The other model is the trustee model, and here the representative who follows the trustee model may listen to constituents’ views, but they will use their own talents, opinions competencies, beliefs, to make a decision about what to do, or how to vote if we're talking about a legislative body or what policy alternative to introduce or suggest. You know that some might see those as in conflict but they aren't necessarily because there is no hard and fast rule as to what a representative has to do. When I talk about this in class students will always often ask what do we have in the US. Do we have a delegate model or the trustee model? The answer is it depends and it depends on a host of issues:it depends on the individual; it depends on the individual representative and how do they see their job; it depends on the issue and here's where we get back to the issue of education; the context surrounding the issue; and really the salience of it, how important it is to the constituents. How important, how relevant is it at the time will depend or will dictate in some cases, how a representative will look at that issue.
For instance, if the issue of invasive species in the Great Lakes comes up, that's a very salient issue here in Michigan and elected officials are likely to I would argue, take the delegate approach and listen to their constituents; not that it's a very hard decision to make. When it's something that their constituents care about they're going to listen very carefully. Someone in New Mexico, or I should say for someone in New Mexico, invasive species in the Great Lakes isn't terribly salient so they may have or want to use that trustee approach, where you know they're thinking to themselves, I don't know what you know what's this about. My constituents don't care about it clearly and I’ve got to go figure out how I'm going to make this decision. So it does matter, the salience of it matters. I think so what that gets us to is that there's often a mix of how these models of representation get employed, if you will, in our system. And again here's what, sorry go ahead...
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Suzanne Klein:
What I was going to say is, so dive a little bit deeper on that. How then does a person who is in a school classroom or in a principal's office or a central office respond to these different models, when you think about engaging a community, that's seen as a more amorphous entity perhaps with parents and non-parents for instance, or recently moved to the community folks, or folks that are now going to be having a preschooler entering kindergarten. You can start to segment it a bit, but how does that notion of engaging with either a trustee or representative model, those in leadership roles play out?
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
Again, I think it depends, because I think that can also change and I think that you know, going back to the point about salience; if things are going well, if times are good, we might have a school board member or somebody works at the school or works for the district, approach things as a trustee. They see no reason to do otherwise, and importantly the public might also see it that way, and where they're okay with that, where they say okay you just handle it.
But if things start to go poorly where, or maybe that's not even the case, because that doesn't capture everything, if things start to become issues, start to become more salient where people, it gets on their radar and now they're really thinking about it. Not only are more members of the public in those categories that you talked about thinking about it, but they may change their expectation for that representative, whether it's an elected school board member or for a superintendent, a principal, what have you, where they are now demanding, ‘You work for me, you better listen to what we think, you better listen to our input’ If somebody has been approaching it as a trustee the whole time the shift in that expectation can be jarring. I think it may take them off guard and it might be one of the things that causes some of the biggest problems , where they start to, they’re now forced to think about their job very, very differently and even some of the decisions they make.
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Bob Maxfield:
Well, I think that the pressure, you know somebody in a trustee role who believes a certain way about education issues, and I guess what you're saying is, will become uncomfortable when the public's view is totally different to where they were, you know, they were they're very interested in public health, very interested in children being safe, very interested in kids wearing masks, and along comes a segment of the community who’s saying, we don't agree with any of that. Now that you're my representative, what are you going to do about it?
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Suzanne Klein:
And it's also been interesting because of the pandemic that people are not in their P.T.O. meetings, where a Board of Ed member might be a liaison and go to those regularly, or there might be community forums. Those things are starting to reappear again. They've been electronic or not held at all for a period of time, while the whole notion of how we might connect through some distance conversations got set up. So it's been an interesting journey to watch that play out and as you're speaking Dave, I'm thinking back about that whole salient piece and wondering how the salience gets influenced by the amount of distance and type of communication that has been in place and that suddenly gets disjointed, and then a new communication model gets introduced. The title of your Center comes to mind, how does one engage the civic conversation in a civil and productive way?
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
I think that can work in different ways where as you say, those kinds of engagement opportunities were nonexistent and now they're starting to come back right, so there weren't the same avenues for feedback right. But in the Zoom world where some of these meetings did take place, but they took place virtually, it can make it worse because I would put zoom or the chat window in Zoom right along with social media ,where people will say things on social media and people will say things in a zoom chat that they would never say to somebody face-to-face. That distance makes a big difference in terms of what people are willing to say and the vitriol with which they're willing to say it. I think first in social media, more so because on Zoom you've got maybe a picture, you've got maybe a screen name but with social media anonymity frees people up a lot and I think that there's to some extent, the same thing going on in virtual meetings.
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Bob Maxfield:
Let’s take us in a little bit different direction, you brought us into the world of political science with this whole notion of representation, but you also introduced someone that I didn't know anything about, that was Richard Fenno and you argue his seminal study, which I know influenced you so much, has some relevance for us today, so talk a little bit about that.
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
Sure you know, I think it really… What I'd like to talk about is sort of this journey from Fenno, to how what Fenno uncovered could be important for folks who work in schools.
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Bob Maxfield:
Perfect.
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
And Richard Fenno’s seminal study is a perfect way to describe it, Bob. If there are famous political scientists Richard Fenno is it.
You know what he did in the mid-70s, it's not that long ago and it's funny to think about political science; a very, very long and ancient discipline in many respects; such an important book was not written until the mid-70s. But what Fenno did was and the book is called Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. What Fenno did was just, well in fact he convinced a handful of U.S. House members to let him follow them around: ride in their car from the district office to the Elks Club, from the district office maybe to a school for a reading session with the kid,or to the V.F.W., or maybe... you name it and Fenno just watched and observed and he called this method of research “soaking and poking”. He just kind of soaked it all in and poked around, which is where he noticed some tendencies, he noticed some commonalities between how Members operated in their districts, but he also saw some differences. And that's where the style comes in, the home style of a member. He did say that there was one key concept and that's called presentation of self; how Members present themselves to their constituents. And I am getting to a point that makes sense here for school board representatives and others. Fenno argued that the most important aspect of presentation of self is trust, building trust and he said that the Members have to build trust with his or her constituents and they have, they do that by focusing on three things:
Number one is qualification- does the Member have what it takes to represent the district, and the people in it; do you have the competencies, do you have the skills, do you have the requisite what it takes?
Number two is identification and here is where the Member has some kind of connection with the constituents and there are famous ones that abound in Congress on this one. Sam Rayburn is a former Speaker of the House, was a Speaker of the House for years and years and years. One of the House office buildings in Washington D.C. is named after him. So Sam Rayburn, very powerful Speaker, very powerful historic member of Congress; he's from Texas, and when he had constituents come to his office they wanted to know that he was from Texas. So what did he do? He kept a spittoon in the corner of his office so that he could identify with his constituents, so they would say, oh there's old Sam, he's still linked to Texas, he's got a spittoon. It tells you also how long ago it was. Another famous one is Teddy Kennedy, obviously now passed, a very famous Member of the US Senate. He would turn his Boston accent up or down depending where he was. It would crank up when the constituents were around, and it would get turned way off when it was just him and the staff or him and other Members, but it was a way to again identify with people.
And you can see some things where that might be a connection there for folks in schools , having a…just as much as wearing the right T-shirt with the high school mascot on it or having a connection to one of the sports teams, or one of the clubs. For me, I would see that as identification, having a connection with the folks.
The last one that Fenno talked about was empathy, where people understand ,where the Member understands the needs of the constituents. And no politician was better at empathy than Bill Clinton. If you think back to the president's time in office, he would bite his lip and get that sort of empathetic look on his face and say, I feel your pain, I really do, I'm with you..and that would be, that's a perfect example. Fenno says, if you do those three things, you will have trust with your constituents and that will lead to a lengthy career for the Member and the constituents will be happy.
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Bob Maxfield:
So we began with the notion of how do we help superintendents deal with these uncertain times and these often divided communities and you're saying Fenno has a lesson there. Certainly achieving these three things for a superintendent or a school board member will help immunize them against the pressures they’re feeling today, but not every superintendent, of course, has that luxury of having built up that history of empathy or history of identification. So David, what advice do you then have for superintendents particularly and also for those people who are currently on school boards? I mean what can they do beyond understanding these qualities which are so vital?
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David Dulio, Oakland University:
You know, I think that the lessons from political science are there and I think that if folks who are listening to this haven't experienced the polarization, the vitriol, the nastiness that is out there, they probably are going to in the not too distant future. I say that because you know, Michigan is.. We're believe it or not, in the middle of an election cycle and November ‘22 is not that far away, where all sorts of people are going to be on the ballot. And I think what we can see is that the issue of education can be important if injected into the political sphere. I think that folks can go look this up, but the Michigan Democratic Party may just have had their Terry McAuliffe moment, with a Facebook post that was then quickly deleted, again about parental involvement in schools. That will come back. Republican candidates are going to use that kind of statement in their campaigns, they would be silly not to quite frankly, that gives them a big advantage. They know that will help them from the lessons of Virginia, and are going to continue to be learned here in Michigan. So for folks who are going to confront that or are confronting those kinds of things, there are lessons that Fenno and political science along with those models of representation can help us deal with those sorts of things. And Bob, you mentioned they may not have been in those positions long enough to build trust or show that identification or I would imagine that nobody is serving in any of those positions without qualifications, that's a “No brainer”. But identification and empathy are, can continue to be important to build, to continue to build that trust, but beyond that I think you know, one key thing for me is transparency and that's not to say that folks on school boards, superintendents, principals are not being transparent. That's not the point I'm trying to make. But be as transparent as you can and there's two reasons, and in two ways: in your processes and in the information that you have share that. If folks start to, if something’s starting to bubble up share more information. Because if you don’t, given the Internet, given how good some folks have gotten at F.O.I.(freedom of information) requests, someone will find out and if they find it out before you share it, you're on the defensive.
If somebody finds out something, uncovers something or even if they don't, people will make assumptions and again you're on the defensive, and you've lost control of the message. That's never a good position to be in for an elected official, for a representative.
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Bob Maxfield:
So, I think that transparency means a lot of things and sometimes superintendents might argue that you can't give too much information. I mean sometimes people get lost in the weeds and so that's you know, how do you qualify that is a question I think people would have one of us sitting here right now.
36:10 --> 37:03.
David Dulio, Oakland University:
And I think that's a really good point, and there are some things that shouldn't be made public right no doubt but I think if folks show a good faith effort to open up to the public, and they say, hey look, here's what we're thinking, if the attempt is made, that's much better than automatically putting up a wall and saying, what we do here is our business and nobody's going to make us tell you what we're doing about curriculum or about mandates, or anything. That, I think, is what gets people to light the torches and bring the pitchforks.
37:06 --> 37:15.
Bob Maxfield:
That's really a good point. So Sue, as we get near the end of our time with David what have we missed, what else did you want to explore?
00:37:17.340 -->00:37:47.610
Suzanne Klein:
I think Dave, your last conversation about being transparent about process and being transparent about information is key and how do you see the mechanisms that are ongoing to inform people, as well as have that two way communication back and forth. That's what I read loud and clear with what you were just saying, whether you are a principal, a teacher or somebody sitting in the central office or a school board member, that seems to be a very key point.
00:37:49.020 --> 00:39:21
David Dulio, Oakland University:
I think so, too. I think it gets back to something else we talked about which is, in the vast majority of time folks in a school district, constituents in a school district, are probably going to let the professionals, let the representatives lead and the true professionals- the superintendents, the principals; they're going to let them do their thing.
But if it starts to bubble up as something that's really important, if it gets on the public's radar, that's going to change and they are going to frankly, rightly so, demand answers. And being able to operate as they would in sort of normal times, that's going to change. They're not going to be able to do that because they are going to have people asking questions, seeking information, looking for answers to questions about what's going on in school, what are you guys doing with my kids, what's the deal.
And I think if folks are just more prepared for that to come, they're in a better position to respond, because again, it can be a sudden change; it can be sort of a jerky reaction right, where they've gone from everybody's letting us do our thing, to ‘oh my gosh now they are beating down the door’.
39:23 --> 39:48
Suzanne Klein:
What I hear you say, or what I hear you infer Dave, is that putting those in place in the best of times serves you in the more challenging of times, so you're not inventing these in response to folks rapping loudly on the door and being very upset. But instead you have systems in place and vehicles in place for that two way communication that becomes just part of the culture of the community and the organization's relationship with it.
39:49 -->40:46
David Dulio, Oakland University:
Ideally, yes right, I think that in the best of times, you know planning during the best of times sets you up for when it becomes more difficult and you know that's not to say that that two way communication or that transparency wouldn't have benefits during the best of times because you will always, and you would know better than I would right? You're always going to have people who want information from the school, from the superintendent, from the principal, from the Board. It's the number of people and the frequency with which that growing number of people wants that information during the bad times or during the stressful times or during the problematic times. If you can build that system when it's smaller and less important, when it becomes bigger and more important I think you're in a better spot.
40:47-->41:25
Bob Maxfield:
And even if you're like, one of our newer colleagues caught up in the middle of it, you haven't had the history, as I was saying earlier of building that, it still holds a good stead. I mean what you said is still important and don't lose sight of that.
So David I believe you've done a great job of helping us better understand an issue that's facing school folks today, bringing the world of political science. I daresay without putting you on the spot that you would not mind responding via email to any of our listeners who might want to explore this further, so we can include your university email address if you wouldn't mind?
00:41:26.220 --> 00:41:27.240
David Dulio, Oakland University:
Please do absolutely.
00:41:28.410 --> 00:41:54
Bob Maxfield:
And we've encouraged people to stay tuned for the work of the Center for Civic Engagement, Oakland University, because it's doing some really wonderful things. So on behalf of our listeners, we want to thank you. And to everybody thanks for being part of this installment of Podcasts for Leaderful Schools coming to you, almost live from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and again our thanks to Dave Dulio on behalf of me and Dr. Suzanne Klein.
Resource
Fenno, Richard F., Home Style: House Members in Their Districts, Little & Brown, 1978.