THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509070193
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
It's going on three years now since voters in Chesapeake demanded their right to choose members of the School Board by direct election. We're still waiting to cast the first ballot.
Now that the federal government's concerns over the city's at-large voting method have been satisfied, there is no good reason to delay the process further. If election law permits balloting to begin in February, that's when the first election should be scheduled.
Some are saying that February is too soon. They argue that five months is not enough time to field a credible slate of candidates. They say candidates won't have time to raise money to finance their campaigns. They say the attention of voters and candidates will be diverted by the holidays, leaving them little time to analyze the issues and choose between competing visions for the future of public education.
Those who favor continued delay of the process argue that moving too quickly could mean that all nine members of the School Board could be novices by the end of the current school year, disrupting the continuity of leadership and leaving the board bereft of experience.
Better, they say, to postpone the first election or to delay subsequent elections, perhaps as late as May 1998.
Have the folks who make these arguments forgotten how the city has been selecting school board members for the past 30 years?
Current members of the board and all their predecessors got their jobs because they were acceptable to whichever political party held the majority on City Council at the time. There has never been any evidence that personal platforms or concern over continuity had anything to do with the process.
We venture to say that, in no case, was five months of careful deliberation involved. In fact, the decisions were generally made after some brief conversation in a back-room caucus. The public has never been permitted to even to view the process, let alone participate in it in a meaningful way. Most recently, the Council refused even to conduct formal interviews with candidates prior to making their decision.
It's difficult to see how citizens could do worse.
If the voters, in their haste, merely rewarded their friends and political cronies with positions on the School Board, would that be any more dangerous than what has happened in the past? We can't see how.
Members of City Council have not proven themselves to be that much smarter than the people who elected them. If they are capable of picking acceptable School Board members in less than five months, surely the public can do it, too. by CNB