Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9408170005
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Opponents have worried, for example, that an elected-board system might make political-campaigning interest and skills a prerequisite for membership. It's happening.
Of the three Roanoke County School Board members whose terms expire this year, only one - Jerry Canada of the Hollins district - is seeking election in November. Charlsie Pafford of Windsor Hills and Barbara "Bootie" Chewning of Vinton are stepping down.
After 12 years, Pafford says, she might have stepped down anyway, but the need to be a politician didn't help. For Chewning, also a 12-year veteran, there's no question about it: She has no wish to go door to door in quest of votes, she said, or to ask political contributors for campaign money.
Which isn't to say that the imperatives of politics are regrettable for other elected posts. Or that winners of the November elections to succeed Pafford and Chewning won't prove just as good or better as School Board members. Or that, after 12 years, it might not be time for the veteran incumbents to leave the board anyway. It might well be.
Clearly, though, the new system carries an automatic delimiter on the pool of prospective School Board members, narrowing the possibilities to those who are willing to get into the political-campaign game. For state legislators and county supervisors, that's as it should be. But should it be a prerequisite for local school boards that do not even have independent fiscal authority?
Because of that lack of independent fiscal authority, opponents also have argued, a system of elected school boards clouds accountability. There's evidence this, too, could be happening.
One possible candidate for the Windsor Hills seat, Andy Lucas, has called for raising the salaries of county teachers, so they won't have to take second jobs in the summer. Fine - except that teacher pay is an issue over which school boards, elected or appointed, typically have limited control.
Too big an expenditure to be susceptible in any major way to budget-tweaking, teacher salaries are more or less a function of the amount of money made available to a school board by the state and the local governing body.
If the issue is teachers' salaries, in other words, you might as well run for the General Assembly or a board of supervisors (or city council) as for the school board. With the legislative bodies rests the power to appropriate, along with the responsibility to levy taxes to raise money for the schools.
A third objection raised by opponents of electing school boards is that highly motivated groups - the religious right, say, or the teachers' association - can gain power beyond their numbers by concentrating on what often are low-key, low-turnout school-board elections. Is this happening in the county as well?
Robert Rouse, a candidate for the Vinton seat, wants time set aside during the school day for silent prayer, abstinence and "traditional family values" stressed in sex-education and family-life classes, and public-library access restricted (in Montgomery County, where the issue arose) to the children's book, "Daddy's Roommate."
More discussion of the merits of these positions, which carry loads of implications, must await another day. For now, it's sufficient to note that they echo religious-right themes. Rouse's right to propound his views and run for the School Board in pursuit of them is not in question. At issue, rather, is the public's willingness to accept the new obligation, highlighted by Rouse's candidacy, that comes with elected school boards: to examine candidates and their views far more closely than when the task of school-board selection was delegated to an appointive authority.
In Roanoke County, that authority had been a commission appointed by local judges appointed by the legislature. It was an archaic, convoluted system lacking in accountability. Appointment by a governing body is a more straightforward method.
Which is precisely what Salem and the city of Roanoke now enjoy. Their city councils appoint the school board members. Accountability is one step away from direct elections.
And yet, Salem in November will hold a referendum on whether to move to an elected board. And petitions are circulating in the city of Roanoke to call for such a vote. Before deciding to follow the fashion of electing their school boards, voters in these two cities should keep an eye on the county's experience between now and November.
by CNB