A survey recently sent to local school boards at the request of Kansas legislators is insulting to board members and probably a waste of everyone’s time.

The survey requested by the Legislature’s Special Committee on Ethics, Elections and Local Government is designed to assess the impact of a bill (HB 2345) introduced last session that would make it illegal for anyone to serve on a local school board if his or her spouse, parent or sibling works at any school district in the state. That’s right; not just the school district governed by the local board, but any school district in the state. So someone whose mother teaches in Hoxie would be barred from serving on the Emporia school board.

Do we also need to ban people with children from serving on local school boards?

Sen. Mitch Holmes, R-St. John, chairs the special committee and defended the survey, which asks board members whether they or any member of their families are employed by a Kansas school district or the Kansas State Department of Education. It also asks whether anyone living in their homes works for any of those entities and whether they have a “substantial interest” in a business that provides services to the state of Kansas or their own school district. There is a perception, Holmes said, that local school boards have a problem with conflicts of interest. “We should at least quantify the number of board members affected by HB 2345 in its current form,” he said.

It’s hard to see why conflict of interest — or the perception thereof — would be a bigger problem for school board members than for any other elected official. All elected officials should be conscious of potential conflicts of interest and prepared to step aside from any issue that presents a conflict. Lawrence city commissioners, for instance, abstain from voting on any issue that affects them financially, but that doesn’t mean a commissioner who owns a downtown business must abstain from voting on all matters that affect downtown — or that he or she should be barred from serving on the commission in the first place.

Having a family member who teaches in a Kansas school actually might make a school board member even more qualified to discuss and decide important issues before the board. Members of local school boards, by state statute, serve without pay. They give their time and energy to this important job out of a sense of civic responsibility and a commitment to education. As is true of all election officials, voters and district patrons have ample opportunity to assess whether board members are taking advantage of their positions for personal gain.

Only one person reportedly spoke in favor of HB 2345 when it was reviewed by the House Education Committee during the last legislative session. Rather than ordering surveys and questioning the integrity of school board members, legislators should be thanking local school boards across the state for the important work they do.