I'll leave it to the Charter Revision Commission to decide whether an appointed or elected Board of Education is a good idea. If it backs a return to an appointed panel, that's fine.
But if it wants to retain an elected school board, one change it ought to consider is to stagger the election of the panel's members.
A big part of the reason that 13 people could run almost invisibily for the school board this year -- each of them hoping to claim one of nine seats -- is that they were all running simultaneously at the same time as a hard-fought mayoral contest as well as City Council elections.
Since people get their information about candidates, for the most part, from the media, it's crazy to ignore the reality that in a year like this, very little attention is going to be focused on the school board race.
On the other hand, if school board members had three-year terms, with three seats up each year, there would be an honest chance for reporters, political parties, candidates, bloggers, voters and everyone else to get at least some glimmer about who's on the ballot.
It would be decidedly more democratic -- small "D" -- because voters would have the possibility of being informed before they have to fill in some bubbles at the polls.
While part of the answer is for the parties to try harder to find quality candidates who are eager to run, another crucial ingredient is to make it possible for people to make decisions among the school board candidates.
Otherwise, they just vote for those they've heard about -- incumbents, usually -- or those from the party they tend to like best.
But most everyone would rather know who they're voting for and what they can expect from that person.
It's kind of funny to say that electing a school board isn't quite open government, but it really isn't when the system is stacked against the possibility of learning much of anything about the candidates.
Let's at least make an effort to shine some light on the people who want to serve on this crucial, often overlooked board.
There's lots of time to fix this, since those who were elected this year are going to serve until 2011, but let's do something to make it right.
Democracy doesn't thrive when the candidates are all unknown to voters.
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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
3 comments:
It's interesting that there has been no reaction to this blog entry. Is no one interested? Is the whole Board of Education controversy just residual from Campaign 2007 and we're all too exhausted or beat up to care?
No, what controversy existed was mainly contrived and campaign rhetoric. More people are satisfied than most, and more satisfied than a few would like yoiu to believe.
Remember, we did VOTE to have an elected board not too many years ago, and while the idea of staggered terms may be interesting, it also does cause some problems being at the same time as elections at other levels.
No reaction because everyone knows that the BOE will do what they want, not what the people want, regardless of staggered terms.
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