Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 16, 1993 TAG: 9309040314
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Well, it's not that simple.
Another supervisor, Harry Nickens, is pushing for a countywide referendum to let voters decide if the School Board should be popularly elected, an option that wasn't open to localities in Virginia before 1992.
In Roanoke County, the School Board is appointed by a committee which, in turn, is appointed by judges, who are, themselves, appointed by the General Assembly. The committee interviews prospective School Board members and makes its choices.
Kohinke wants to keep it this way. ``If it ain't broke, don't fix it,'' he said this week, meaning that the school board formed under the status quo isn't beset by obvious problems.
But Nickens has a point, too: The county's antiquated selection process is too far removed from accountability to the public - which, after all, foots the bill for the schools.
Who elected this judge or his selection committee? Shouldn't the public have some avenue for influencing School Board actions?
Of course it should. It can have that, short of direct election, by the other means Virginia provides for picking school boards: selection by a locality's governing body.
In the county's case, this is the Board of Supervisors. And yet a third member of the board, Lee Eddy, is working to get this option put to a referendum, too.
The possibility of having multiple options on the November ballot could give rise to confusion. But, in any case, Eddy's proposal is the best, and ought to be endorsed by county voters.
Putting board appointments in the hands of the elected body is the middle way. It rests on solid ground.
It increases public accountability over the old judicial system. But it avoids problems inherent in direct school board elections, at least in the state of Virginia.
Principal among such problems is the absence of taxing power. The General Assembly decided, in 1992, that Virginia voters could be entrusted with the power to elect their school boards, but it did not give boards taxing authority.
So School Board candidates could promise all they want at election time; they still would lack the power of the pursestrings to implement their agendas.
Politicizing the selection process, moreover, risks eliminating qualified people from serving - public-spirited people who simply aren't politicians, and won't spend the time or money to run a campaign.
It might also open the way for candidates who can marshal votes to advance single-issue agendas - from banning books to raising teachers' pay - that don't necessarily reflect community priorities. Voters presumably can correct, in future elections, a hostile takeover or harmful meddling in instruction. But, meantime, what about the children?
Despite such pitfalls, elected school boards have won wide public favor. The first year the General Assembly changed the law, 42 localities in the commonwealth put referendums on the ballot to switch from appointed to elected boards, including Pulaski, Bland, Patrick, Craig, and Carroll counties and the city of Buena Vista. Every one of them passed.
Legislators could have made a better contribution to local-government reform had they removed the rustic relic of judicially appointed school-board selection committees.
They didn't, but Roanoke County voters can still expunge the thing from their own jurisdiction. They can also replace it with the best alternative, a non-taxing school board appointed by the elected governing body.
County voters twice have rejected this option, most recently in 1988. Given the general mood for more direct participation in public decision-making, maybe the third time will prove the lucky one.
by CNB