School boards urge parent partnership

A school-board advocacy group is pushing districts to treat parents as part of the response to classroom misbehavior, not as bystanders. (sbaenetwork.org, thehill.com) School Boards for Academic Excellence amplified that message in a recent social-media post linking to a March 22, 2026, Hill article on student discipline. The group says local boards, parents and teachers should work together on school policy and student outcomes. (thehill.com, sbaenetwork.org) The Hill article cited an Education Week survey released in March in which 64 percent of teachers said classroom behavior had gotten worse over the past year. More than 55 percent said parents should get instruction on how to teach children to behave in class. (thehill.com, edweek.org) The same report said a majority of teachers favored restricting screen time in schools, and about half said tougher consequences such as suspensions or expulsions were needed. That puts parent partnership inside a wider discipline debate that also includes class size, phone limits and school-based consequences. (thehill.com) School Boards for Academic Excellence was founded in 2023 and says its mission is to build a national network of state-based groups and school board members focused on academic excellence and parental rights. Its website says public school boards oversee more than 85 percent of the nation’s roughly 49.5 million public-school students. (influencewatch.org, sbaenetwork.org, ies.ed.gov) The argument has traction because behavior problems have remained a national complaint since students returned to in-person learning after the coronavirus pandemic. The Hill reported in May 2023 that 70 percent of teachers, principals and district leaders said students had misbehaved more than in 2019. (thehill.com) Teachers and researchers do not all want the same remedy. Daniel Buck of the American Enterprise Institute told The Hill parental backing can determine whether school discipline works, while Nancy Duchesneau of EdTrust said discipline should be a “co-creation” using evidence-based practices from both educators and families. (thehill.com, edtrust.org) EdTrust has also warned that harmful discipline policies can damage students’ social, emotional and academic development, especially when schools rely on exclusion instead of support. That is why the current argument is less about whether behavior is a problem than about who should respond, and how. (edtrust.org) One example in The Hill came from Denham Springs Junior High in Louisiana, where principal Justin Wax said suspensions and expulsions were cut in half over three years by pairing detention with tutoring and using alternatives such as vaping-education courses. The school’s approach kept consequences in place while changing what students do during them. (thehill.com, lpsb.org) The immediate takeaway from the school-board group’s post is narrower than a national policy shift: it is an effort to steer local boards toward discipline plans that reach beyond the classroom door. In this debate, parent partnership is being presented as one tool alongside rules, training and consequences. (sbaenetwork.org, thehill.com)