The lack of a state budget. Swine flu. Bullying. Property tax reform. Wage tax collection reform. Health care reform. State test scores. There are any number of critical issues requiring the attention of school board members.

So please, please tell us why the Avonworth School Board would involve itself in something as relatively insignificant as a booster organization trying to collect money it believes is due from two parents?

As knee-jerk reactions go, the board's decision to hastily draft and adopt a resolution opposing the boosters' efforts ranks right up there with the worst of them. As far as we can tell, the entire scope of the board's knowledge came from one parent named as a defendant in lawsuits filed by the boosters to collect a couple hundred dollars they say the parents promised to pay.

No one on the board bothered to get both sides of the story. No one bothered to question the veracity of what had to be a biased view of the situation. They just voted to attempt to influence a court decision.

And that is what is truly troubling about the board's action last Monday. The school board members present quite deliberately chose to threaten a group againt taking actions it is legally entitled to take, and then to communicate those threats and the board's uneducated opinion to the court itself.

Frankly, there were enough attorneys in that meeting room -- including board members themselves -- to know better.

Our court system is able to maintain its integrity and credibility only by cutting itself off from such blatant political influence. A judge is sworn to decide each case only on the evidence presented in the courtroom.

By its actions, the Avonworth School Board stated loudly and clearly that it believed not only that the local district court could be improperly influenced, but that a group of elected officials had the power to do just that.

Hopefully the lawsuits will be moved to a court that neither knows nor cares what the Avonworth School Board thinks about the matter, and both the parents and the boosters can get a fair hearing based on the evidence.