Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990 TAG: 9006080720
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Virginia's system is unique in that all school-board members in the state are appointed rather than directly elected. It is a system, said the state wing of the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs, that discriminates against blacks.
Except it doesn't: The other unique thing about local school boards in Virginia is that they have black members in equal proportion - 18 percent - to the number of blacks in the state's population. That can't be said in states with elected school boards, the method that the ACLU and other plaintiffs prefer.
The irony gets richer.
A current argument of civil-rights activists is that effect, rather than harder-to-prove intent, should be the yardstick for showing illegal racial bias.
In the past, Virginia's system of school-board selection has been used on occasion to perpetuate discrimination. But its effect today is almost as if it were a court-ordered remedy for discrimination.
The Virginia system has been found legal, but it may not remain intact. Over the years, measures to provide for elected school boards have gained ground in the General Assembly. Legislation soon may give the plaintiffs what the courts would not.
Needed far more than the local option to elect school boards, however, is abolition of the method used in a significant minority of Virginia localities: appointment by a selection commission appointed by a judge, who was appointed by the legislature.
That method severs the link between those who tax and those who spend, and there is no accountability in it. It is made worse when a selection commission interviews school-board candidates behind closed doors, as happened recently in Roanoke County.
Best is the method used by a majority of Virginia localities: appointment by the elected governing body. This method holds fast the taxing-spending link. To a degree it insulates the schools from politics, but school boards are only one step removed from the voters. The financial needs of the schools can be considered in light of the overall financial needs of the locality.
If, however, elected school boards must supplant boards appointed by local governing bodies, at least let them have their own taxing authority.
A system of elected school boards without taxing authority could encourage a demagogic brand of school politics: School-board candidates could promise popular but expensive programs, while being unaccountable to those who must impose the taxes to cover the cost. Another option - depriving elected school boards of the power to spend because they do not bear the responsibility to tax - seems no better: It would make them paper tigers, their decisions rendered meaningless for lack of funding to put them into effect.
No system is foolproof. The currently proportionate representation of blacks on Virginia's school boards results not only from the selection method but also from the attitudes of those who do the selecting.
Similarly, the success of elected school boards would depend not only on the details of how the system is set up, but also on the attitudes of the people working within it.
by CNB