Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 2, 1993 TAG: 9310070421
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The panel member scheduled to speak for elected school boards didn't show up.
Other speakers either backed the present method of appointing school boards or said elected school boards wouldn't be much different.
None responded directly to a question from Lynn Linkous, who organized a successful petition drive to get the issue of electing the Montgomery County School Board on the ballot next month.
Her question: Because most of the local tax revenue goes to fund the county's school budget, shouldn't School Board members be directly accountable to taxpayers by election?
The forum's moderator, Ann Hess, acknowledged the event might have seemed ``one-sided'' in favor of appointed school boards.
Hess said groups and individuals on the other side of the question were included in planning the event. The Rev. Eddie Booth, who wants an elected School Board, was invited to participate and was listed on the program as a panel member, but did not appear.
Booth said Friday he didn't attend the forum because he needed to work at his church, which is being refurbished.
About 100 people attended, few or none of whom were among the thousands who signed the referendum petition, Linkous said.
Even so, after listening to the program, Linkous said, ``As far as I'm concerned, we came out on top.''
She also predicted the referendum next month on switching to elected school boards will pass.
Linkous said she was encouraged by the comments of the forum's keynote speaker, Jerry Floyd of the National School Board Association.
Floyd said 95 percent of school boards across the nation are elected. He also said political pressures probably wouldn't increase on elected rather than appointed school board members.
``There's not that much difference,'' he said.
The main problem with elected school boards in Virginia is that members will have no taxing authority, said panel member John McPhail, former chairman of the Radford School Board.
Floyd said nine of 10 school boards nationally have taxing authority. Yet in Virginia the school budget will continue to be determined by boards of supervisors instead of school boards, even if the system for selecting school board members is changed.
That fact hasn't blunted the enthusiasm of Virginians for changing the system from appointments to direct elections.
Next month Montgomery and Floyd counties will be among 35 localities voting on whether to change to elected school boards.
Since last year, when the General Assembly first allowed referendums on school board selection, 42 localities have voted to make the change, including Pulaski County.
The question has passed every time it's appeared on the ballot, and has been favored by 80 percent of those who voted, Floyd said.
Virginia is the only state, he said, that appoints school board members by boards of supervisors or by special selection committees.
In Montgomery County, interest in an elected school board was spurred this year by a controversy over the school system's policy of not using religious names for school holidays.
Linkous, who disagreed with the school board policy, said that issue helped to solidify support for elected school boards.
No one directly referred to that controversy during Thursday's forum. But panel member and Blacksburg High School senior Leigh Clare LaBerge said she favored appointed school boards because they would be better insulated from pressure groups such as religious fundamentalists.
Panel member and former Montgomery County Supervisor Lindsay West, who favors appointed school boards, said qualified board members are scarce and would be less inclined to serve if they had to run for the office.
West also fears that boards of supervisors will have a more contentious relationship with school boards that are popularly elected rather than appointed by the supervisors themselves.
Floyd said the National School Board Association is neutral on the question of appointed or elected school boards.
Yet he did say that Virginia has a ``much more laudable record'' under the appointment system for placing blacks on school boards than does the rest of the country.
Currently, black membership on school boards mirrors the state's black population at 18 percent, he said.
Nationally, 12 percent of the population is black but only 2 percent of school board members are, he said.
by CNB