Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 2, 1992 TAG: 9202020095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS BOYER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
ELECTED-SCHOOL BOARD BILLS FACING HIGH NOON
A showdown - or showdowns - on elected school boards should come this week in both houses of the General Assembly.On Monday morning, the House Education Committee is to act on several bills directed at the issue. Advocates say they have enough votes to win the committee's approval, but there will be an attempt to delay the first school board elections for four years.
A subcommittee headed by Del. Thomas Forehand Jr., D-Chesapeake, will recommend that localities be allowed to vote this fall on whether to have elected boards, but not actually hold those elections until 1996.
Forehand said he supports the delay because it would give all school board members appointed this year the chance to serve out their four-year terms.
But Del. David Brickley, D-Prince William, longtime sponsor of school board election, said he will seek approval of his original bill, under which the first elections could be held in 1994.
Meanwhile, advocates of elected boards still say their most difficult test will come in the state Senate, where a half-dozen bills on the issue are awaiting action by the Privileges and Elections Committee.
The bills range from a fast-track proposal from Sen. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, which would set an election for the resort city's board in November, to the more conservative approach of Sens. Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton, and Clarence Holland, D-Virginia Beach.
Andrews' and Holland's bills would merely begin the process for a constitutional amendment to create local, elected boards with their own power to levy taxes. That process would take at least four years, and elected board advocates have labeled the approach a way to dodge the issue.
Somewhere between the two approaches is a bill backed by many Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads legislators that would allow local voters to decide whether to change their systems.
It's expected to win all six Republican votes on the 15-member Privileges and Elections Committee, and should win at least one Democrat, Charles Waddell, D-Loudoun. The pivotal vote may be that of the committee chairman, Joseph Gartlan, D-Fairfax, who said he has changed his position since last year and now supports elected school boards.
Andrews, who is close to Gartlan, is expected to push to kill the more liberal measures in favor of the slower constitutional amendment process. But "I don't know whether Hunter's got the votes to do that on the committee," Brickley said.