SCHOOL BOARD'S RETREAT REVEALS UNSURE FOOTING

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education will head out this weekend for its annual retreat. It is intended as a concentrated period in which elected board members and their hired administrators can focus on the broader needs and concerns of the school district. While they are to be commended for devoting themselves to this concept of strategic planning, it should be noted that the board's "body language" is betraying them. The conduct of this retreat reveals a board with a limited grasp of how the public perceives problems in educational funding.

School board members and a handful of administrators will attend this retreat Friday night through Sunday at the Executive Inn in Paducah, Ky. Room rates as low as $44 have been arranged and the meeting room is $50 a day. The budget for the retreat is between $1,200 and $1,500.

A case can be made for an out-of-town gathering of this type. What you buy is commitment: if participants go out of town, distancing themselves from day-to-day problems, they can be counted on, locked in and undistracted. Businesses employ this idea of off-site meetings frequently. On the other hand, businesses aren't answerable to taxpayers. Taxpayers might wonder why board members they elected can't think clearly in their own backyard.

Is this a nickel-and-dime argument? Maybe. The Cape Girardeau School District has a budget of more than $19 million; $1,500 in that context isn't really significant. On the other hand, it would buy some band equipment, pay for some art supplies, provide referee salaries for several games, or maybe purchase a classroom computer.

The journey to Kentucky, in light of current home-state debate on education funding, is an ill-considered one. The story goes that past retreat sites in Missouri were contacted and unavailable for the necessary weekend. Black Forest, a site of a previous board retreat in Cape Girardeau County, was not contacted ... too close to home, too distracting.

Yet the school board and administrators will likely beckon this fall to Missourians those who saw their tax dollars spent on out-of-state lodging and meals in this case and tell them the higher revenues of Proposition B are necessary. The real supporters of Proposition B should be put off that school funds are not being spent more judiciously as the campaign approaches. Could the board have increased its resolve, met closer to home, spent the same money with local lodges and caterers, and built up some good will where it might have a return? That would have been the better route.

In March, one local administrator who attended a rally in Jefferson City for increased educational funding (he will also attend this retreat) pointed out that 200 of 505 Missouri school districts spent more than they took in last year. The ledger has but two sides, and if raising revenue is to be a priority for education, then spending should be watched with equal interest. The board has a great many large issues to address this weekend. Let us hope those challenges are handled with more sure footing than the planning of this retreat.