The Albert Lea school board missed a teachable moment on Tuesday.

The people who came to the meeting engaged in civics. They exercised their First Amendment rights to free speech, petition and assembly. These are the sort of good lessons we hope students take to heart when they graduate from our schools.

The primary point the students, parents and concerned citizens were making Tuesday was that the Albert Lea school board should wait two weeks so that the decision to cut the high school band director — thereby changing the band program yet again — could be given further consideration.

Instead, after hearing from the people, the board voted 4-1 to move forward with the proposed cuts. Then Superintendent Mike Funk attempted to acknowledge the efforts of the students, and good for him for trying. However, his comments about “this is real-world life” came off as obtuse. Perhaps his top-down military style fails to set the right tone in a room of people who are not under his command.

A lot was said about efficiency, too.

Parent Paul Schmitt made the point that the private sector, known for being efficient, listens to the concerns of its customers.

Schmitt, parent Todd Schoonover and many people, even one of the school board members, wanted to know options. To them, it seemed the school board heard one option — the one Funk brought forth as a result of the realignment of schools. For many government panels, from city councils to county boards to local school boards, the executive provides several options for the board members when making decisions, then recommends a particular option. This provides the board with a better perspective and more knowledge of what can be done.

Perhaps providing options isn’t as efficient — it takes time to research other options — but good executives offer them. A democracy is about making informed choices, and, preferably, the choices are more than yes or no.

Democracy also is about listening to the concerns of the constituents.

The school board says it wants more public involvement, and, to be sure, the board members themselves did a fine job of being receptive to the crowd Tuesday.

But if the school board members wanted to teach the people, particularly the students, that their voices indeed were heard — the teachable moment — they could have tabled the matter of cutting 17 teachers until the next meeting so that there would have been time to explore alternatives.

Even if the result in two weeks turned out to be the same, then fine. But at least then the school board would have had more buy-in from its public, and the public (and the board) would have had a greater teachable moment than what transpired Tuesday.