Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 23, 1992 TAG: 9202230144
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ELECTED SCHOOL BOARDS?
Roanoke School Board, 1992: seven members, three women, four men, three blacks, four whites.Roanoke School Board, 1994: seven members, all male, all white??
It's just a possibility, but it's one that some teachers and current School Board members fear when school boards are elected by voters and not appointed by City Council.
"Our board has been balanced," said Roanoke School Board member Marilyn Curtis, who is black. "We've had men and women and blacks and whites. I consider it a well-balanced board."
But the General Assembly has cleared the way for elections to replace appointments in communities that choose to switch. The first elections wouldn't take place until 1994 at the earliest, but it would end Virginia's reign as the only state that doesn't allow elected boards.
And if board members are elected instead of appointed, Curtis is among those who say it could forever tilt the racial and gender balance on future school boards all over Virginia.
Campaigns cost money. That could exclude a lot of people - including blacks and women - from the election process, Curtis said.
Schools are full of problems that are specifically minority problems, she said, and school boards need minority representatives who understand what's going on in those communities.
"We can't have tailor-made programs just for the elite white," she said.
In states that have elected school boards, those concerns have become reality:
Students in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, N.C., are nearly 40 percent minority. There are no blacks on the nine-member school board.
Charlotte/Mecklenberg County, N.C., has a student population that is about 40 percent minority. Two of its nine school board members are black - about 22 percent.
Charleston/Kanawha County, W. Va., has a 10 percent minority school population. The only black ever to serve on the School Board was a woman who was appointed to fill an unexpired term. She served less than a year, and when her term was up decided not to run.
In Roanoke, about 40 percent of the students are black. On the School Board, three out of seven members - 43 percent - are black.
"I think you get much fairer decisions this way," Curtis said.
Nancy Wilson teaches at Roanoke County's Northside High School and is president of the Salem chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. As a teacher, she knows she's supposed to back up the Virginia Education Association's support of elected boards. But . . .
"I thought we were far better off with the appointed School Board," she said. "We could lose about 5 to 6 percent of the minorities that we have on the school boards" if a lot of communities statewide decide to switch.
"If we do that, we could go back to the days before, and we don't want to go back there," Wilson said.
Bodies that now appoint school boards - city councils, county boards of supervisors and, as in Roanoke County, school board selection commissions - at least try to keep boards balanced to reflect the percentage of minority students, she said. With voters, there is no such assurance.
"I'm very sorry that that passed at the General Assembly," Wilson said.
Dorothy Cooper, president of the Roanoke Education Association, said those who have the money to fund a campaign may not be the same people who would support the needs of teachers. Those people, she said, "might not think too much of teachers' rights."
"Your best people may not have the money to run," Cooper said.
"I think the potential for the all-white, male school board is a powerful potential; and that scares me a lot, because our city is not made up of all whites, or males."