George,

Here's a proposal for city school board elections :

1. All Members Elected At-Large.

At large elections would ensure the largest pool of qualified and interested candidates

2. Public Financing of Campaigns (City Pays Campaign Expenses).

The benefits of public financing are obvious and the expense to the city would be a tiny fraction of the school budget if an appropriate number of signatures were needed to get on the ballot.

3. Mandatory Public Forums in Each School District.

Public forums in each school district would give the concerned residents a chance to present their concerns to all candidates and to hear the candidates? positions. Ward-based campaigns could not focus on individual school districts to the same degree.

Our proposal presents a simple way to encourage serious candidates from all parts of the city to run for positions on the school board. It would also require dialogue of all the candidates with residents of all neighborhoods.

In contrast, any system involving district, precinct or ward elections would require the difficult, time-consuming and controversy-generating task of drawing boundaries that would be fair to all residents and also meet the approval of the United States Department of Justice. And, with our rapidly changing neighborhoods, boundaries would have to be redrawn before very long.

It would not be hard to adopt our proposal for the May 2006 election and it could serve as an experiment that would help us decide what system we want to use in future elections.

Gene and Jane Foster (electronic mail, December 10, 2005)