Public Politics and Democratic Administration: the way school board works with the Municipal Secretary of Education

Abstract

The great depth of changes in the capitalism system beginning in the middle of the twentieth century has produced a total new way of life, which encloses from social behavior patterns to the relationship between capital, employment and the State. International organisms have been created to organize the changing process in the Nations’ agenda around the world, including the educational area that begins to be understood as priority justifying the needs of a new social pact, which implies the participation of the whole society. In Brazil, the municipal, state and federal laws sanction the principle of “democratic administration”. What we need to verify, though, is how this principle has been put in practice. Hence, the text intends to analyze the school board performance within the education system of São Carlos/SP, identifying the participation possibilities of the community inside the school. For that, we used the statements given by the municipal school counselors, and, as a result we identified two important obstacles regarding the democratic inner workings of the school board: one related to parity and power sharing; and the other regarding the representation.