THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 7, 1995 TAG: 9502070005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
And better some semblance of outrage than none: After months of silence, the Virginia Beach Education Association has called publicly for School Board member Charles W. Vincent to step down until his criminal case is resolved. The VBEA board also recommends that Mr. Vincent resign permanently if the judge upholds his conviction by a jury last month of nine vi-o-la-tions of ethics provisions of state law.
Mr. Vincent is on the School Board thanks in large part to the VBEA. The teachers' association not only endorsed him. It spent almost $40,000 in contributions from education associations nationwide on behalf of him and five other can-di-dates.
Yet the local teachers' association has remained mum through the revelation that Mr. Vincent's ``Ph.D.'' in psychology from a California religious organization, touted throughout the campaign, is in-val-id according to California officials. The association saw no urgency to respond to the jury's verdicts on Mr. Vincent's ethics. It waited three weeks for a regularly scheduled meeting of the VBEA board to de-cide that he is ``an ineffective board member.''
Even now, the poor example that his ``doctorate'' and his use of it set for Virginia Beach's 75,000 public schoolchildren is not, according to President Vickie Hendley, a factor in the VBEA's newfound dissatisfaction. No, the only tangible instance of Mr. Vincent's ineffectiveness the VBEA acknowledges is his failure to talk fellow members into buying an electronic voting board.
Through his attorney, Mr. Vincent reiterates his determination to stay on the School Board unless and until the law removes him. That is his privilege. And if the law does not remove him? If the court sets aside the jury verdicts or upholds them and Mr. Vincent appeals, will the VBEA call for him to resign then as well? Or for his removal by other means? For it's the public's privilege to petition the Circuit Court for review of his fitness for office independent of his criminal trial, and by an ethical standard higher than ``I am not a convicted crook.''
There is already one vacancy on the Virginia Beach School Board, occasioned by the resignation of Chairman Jim Darden. Mr. Vincent's departure would make two vacant seats to which Circuit Court judges must appoint interim members to serve until a special election in May 1996.
The law doesn't require the judges to fill vacancies swiftly, but they should. Though School Board elections in Virginia Beach are nonpartisan, and judges' impartiality (at least relative to popularly elected officials') is a reason interim appointments rest with them, the law doesn't require that they appoint on an apolitical, nonpartisan basis. And politics may arise.
Virginia's legislature, dominated for decades by Democrats, appoints Virginia's judges. The big bugaboo of professional educators these days is the Religious Right, which is most associated with Republicans. And the big bucks of education associations nationwide go mainly to candidates of Democratic persuasion and connections.
The VBEA surely will make known whose appointment(s) it would prefer. That's its privilege. But from here on out, its endorsements are tainted by its failure to check out Charles Vincent and its slowness to acknowledge both his failures and its own. by CNB