Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 3, 1994 TAG: 9411030070
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Strange is alone with his opinion on the six-member board, which likely will wind up smaller by one member if the city's voters approve a ballot referendum Tuesday to switch from an appointed to an elected School Board.
Under an elected system, the School Board must mirror the governing board - the Radford City Council - which has five members, including the mayor.
The bottom line for Strange is that appointed boards are undemocratic. "Five people out of 5,600 [voters] make the choice," he said. "In that case, why don't we just appoint the president?"
Strange, who helped circulate petitions to put the question on the Nov. 8 ballot, said he has no reservations about running for the office he was appointed to last May. He also dismisses concerns about single-issue candidates and special interests dominating an election campaign, or about minority representation on a board that now consists of six white males.
Special interests are not an issue "if you're an ethical person," he said. He also believes that, in an election, minority candidates would have as good a chance as anyone else at a seat.
Strange, the director of contract services at Radford Community Hospital, may be one of the few Radford citizens with any fire in his belly for the elected vs appointed School Board issue.
With less than a week until the election, even Mayor Tom Starnes is not sure how he'll vote. "I have mixed feelings," he conceded. On the one hand, he said, the appointive system has "served the city well." On the other, "you can't knock letting the people decide," he said.
Giving the people "a little more of a voice" in selecting their School Board was the reason Kelly Morris gave when she began the petition drive early this year. She has denied having any axes to grind or that the petition drive has any connection with her husband's part-time coaching job in the Radford City Schools. David "Dink" Morris coaches football and baseball.
Kelly Morris has said she and her husband supported the School Board's decision to drop Radford High School's athletic classification from AA to A. "That was one positive thing they did,"' she said in January as the drive got under way.
Starnes also faults the General Assembly for "not having enough faith" to grant taxing authority to elected school boards in Virginia. He thinks that would make elected board members directly and completely accountable to the voters on school issues and budgets as well as on the tax levy to support the schools.
That's a complaint shared by Strange and by the School Board's other members, none of whom is excited about the idea of running for election. Chip Craig, the School Board member who has been most outspoken, said he opposes elected school boards without taxing authority and absolutely would not run.
Strange said he'd rather have taxing authority but he can live without it for now.
Even the city's teachers, who would be directly affected by a change, have taken no formal position. Betty Whitley, president of the Radford Education Association, said the issue arose at the association's executive committee meeting this week but "we haven't taken any position right now."
Speaking as an individual, though, Whitley - who teaches at McHarg Elementary School but lives in Pulaski County - said she thinks the City Council "has done a good job of finding qualified representatives" for the School Board.
Just what shape an elected School Board would take is undecided. Under the Voting Rights Act, any plan that affects how officials are elected in Virginia must get U.S. Justice Department approval. Board members now are appointed from each of the city's wards, holdovers from the days of neighborhood schools, while City Council members are elected at large.
When Montgomery County voters approved an elected school board last year, the board's makeup had to be reshuffled and its members' terms adjusted to permit an orderly transition. There, the number of board members will drop from nine to seven when the elected board finally is in place by 1998. But the Montgomery Board of Supervisors will make two final appointments to the School Board for truncated terms next year before elections in the fall of 1995 and 1997. The transition was necessary to bring School Board members' terms into sync with those of the elected Board of Supervisors, as required by state law.
by CNB