DATE: Tuesday, April 29, 1997               TAG: 9704290002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   49 lines

A FAILED EXPERIMENT VIRGINIA BEACH SHOULD RETURN TO AN APPOINTED BOARD

The acrimony of the school budget season in Virginia Beach shows how ugly things can get when elected school board members pass budgets that are funded by a separate entity, namely City Council.

By statute, council has responsibility for the city's taxes. Yet more than half of the city's almost $1 billion budget goes to pay for schools. When City Council appointed the School Board, it could appoint citizens with educational and budget expertise. It could demand apolitical professionalism from the board. That changed when the voters switched to an elected board.

Now School Board members may or may not be qualified for the job and some may act as politicians grasping for the next rung on the career ladder. There have been rumors of back-room arm-twisting as the School Board has defeated resolutions supporting council in raising taxes. Some suspect School Board members of making decisions partially based on their own political futures rather than the welfare of Virginia Beach schoolchildren.

City Council members fear they will be punished if they raise taxes this year, which they say they must to fully fund the budget the School Board recommends. Council members argue, with some merit, that since School Board members now run independently for election, they should take some of the heat for raising revenues.

Other states have avoided this kind of bickering and finger-pointing by forcing elected school boards to raise their own taxes.

Virginia, with no provision for fiscally autonomous school boards, is left with a weird, unworkable hybrid: an elected school board with no responsibility for raising its own funds.

When Virginia Beach switched to an elected School Board, it gained board members with a need to appease constituents and an eye on political opportunities. It lost a School Board able to take the long view, willing to make objective judgments and able to conduct a cordial working relationship with City Council.

There is a solution. Virginia Beach voters ought to mount a grass-roots effort to return to an appointed School Board. The sooner the better. An appointed board would be somewhat insulated from political pressures and accountable to the City Council, which in turn answers to the voters.

Virginia state law provides a simple remedy for cities disillusioned with the elected school board experiment. It is found in Code Section 22.1-57.4 ``Referendum to revert to appointment of the school board.''

The section was enacted by the General Assembly in 1992, the same year the legislature voted to allow elected school boards. Lawmakers obviously realized there would be school districts where elected school boards would fail.

Virginia Beach has begun to look like one.

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