George

In 1992, a Democratic-controlled General Assembly passed a bill that gave Virginia localities the right to have elected rather than appointed school boards. According to the legislation, the school board in a given locality would become an elected body if (a) 10 percent of registered voters signed a petition to place a referendum on the ballot and (b) the referendum was approved by a majority of voters at the next scheduled election.

Patrons of the 1992 bill included Creigh Deeds, who is now our state senator and the Democratic candidate for attorney general. The bill was signed into law by Douglas Wilder, the first African-American to have been elected governor of a U.S. state and currently the mayor of Richmond.

Since this enabling legislation was passed, 78 percent of Virginia localities have voted to replace their appointed school boards with elected ones. Although the law allows localities to switch back to an appointed board by means of a similar referendum procedure, none have chosen to do so. The reason elected school boards are now in place across the commonwealth is that they have proven effective at running the schools.

On November 8, Charlottesville residents will have the opportunity to vote on a referendum that, if approved, will allow the city to gradually transition to an elected school board. I support the referendum and urge others to do so as well.

I support having an elected school board because an elected board is more likely to be responsive to the needs and concerns of the community, to operate transparently, to view itself as accountable to the voters, and to implement policies that enjoy public support. An elected board also is likely to be more effective at managing the school system because it will have deep ties to the community as well as the authority to implement policies that may be necessary to tackle major challenges such as the achievement gap.

I would like to address some of the concerns that have been raised by thoughtful skeptics of the referendum.

Won't having elections lead to unnecessary politicization? The authors of the enabling legislation were concerned about this as well, and thus mandated that school board elections be nonpartisan. There will be no Democratic or Republican candidates for the school board.

Elections are, by nature, political events. To oppose having an elected board for this reason, however, is to ignore the fact that politics have played a central role in city council's selection of past school board members. Politics can't be avoided when it comes to something as fundamental as the education of our children. The value of elections is that the politics is brought out of the backroom and into the public sphere.

Another concern is that an elected board will lack diversity. I shared this concern until I studied the city's recent electoral history. African-American candidates were the top vote-getters in the city council elections of 1996, 2000, and 2004. In two of these elections, the African-American candidate was chosen by almost two-thirds of the voters. Moreover, the Charlottesville/Albemarle branch of the NAACP recently endorsed the referendum. These facts suggest that qualified minority candidates will fare well in elections to the school board.

Another objection is that only school boards that enjoy taxing authority ­ which those in Virginia do not ­ should be elected. This argument ignores the fact that most elected boards in the commonwealth have excellent working relations with the local taxing authority. Charlottesville's overwhelmingly Democratic voters are likely to elect a school board and a city council that share a strong commitment to full funding of our schools.

If any city is likely to have a successful elected school board, it's Charlottesville. After all, our major local industry is public education, and we chose John Kerry over George W. Bush by a three-to-one margin. If you share my faith in our world-class city and its progressive electorate, vote "yes" on November 8.

Jeffrey Rossman (Electronic Mail, October 25, 2005)