Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 8, 1992 TAG: 9201080318
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ELECTED - AND POWERLESS?
THIS YEAR, 'tis said, prospects are good for the General Assembly at last to authorize localities to have elected school boards, due in part to the willingness of key backers to compromise.They'll now support such authorization, say groups like the Virginia Education Association and the state Parent-Teacher Association, even if the legislature doesn't grant taxing power to the boards.
Some compromise. It intensifies the potential harm elected school boards would do, their tendency to politicize school issues. And it sacrifices the potential benefit, greater accountability to the public.
For money - the issue that counts most, particularly at the local level - the schools would still be the stepchildren of county boards of supervisors and city councils. But oh, what an opportunity for would-be demagogues and political poseurs. Run for the board, and make your name by promising anything and everything. Not to worry: It's not your job to figure out how to pay for it.
Over the years, support for elected school boards has been particularly strong in Northern Virginia. That seems fitting. A system that encourages aspiring politicians to talk their way onto school boards without having to give a thought to revenues may come natural to folks who live within a commuter's drive of Capitol Hill.
But don't blame those evil Northern Virginians too much. The disconnect between programmatic policy and fiscal policy isn't unique to them.
In a poll conducted for this newspaper in September and October by Roanoke College's Center for Community Research, 67 percent of Roanoke Valley residents favored elected school boards. Yet 94 percent opposed giving school boards independent taxation powers. So why bother electing them?
Just as the kind of government in Washington ultimately reflects the kind of government that America as a whole chooses for itself, so the improved prospects in Richmond for elected school boards - never mind that they couldn't really domuch - reflects the spreading popularity of the idea throughout the commonwealthas a whole.
Yes, one of the two methods by which school-board members in Virginia currently are chosen should be jettisoned. Having school boards selected by special committees selected by judges selected by the General Assembly is grotesque. (In other localities, such as Roanoke, school-board members are chosen by the governing body, making them only one step removed from direct election.)
And yes, Virginia's schools need help. The gains of the 1980s are fast eroding in the recession and cutbacks of the early 1990s.
Ways must be found to put more state money into education. That money must be distributed more equitably, so that children in poorer localities are not unfairly penalized. Attitude adjustments are called for in those localities that have the wherewithal to do better but nonetheless underfund their schools.
But real answers, the ones that recognize the link between tax input and programmatic output, entail a measure of pain. How much more comfortable are the camouflage answers, such as elected school boards without fiscal power. They don't deliver much in the end, but they seem painless at the time.