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PHALON'S FILE - 6/4/2008
(by Joe Phalon - OpEd Columnist - June 04, 2008)
Don't change school board elections
Move school board elections to November? Bad idea. Eliminate public approval of school budgets? Ditto.
Like the proposed deposit-bottle bill, tampering with school board and budget elections is another case of taking a sledgehammer to something that should be tweaked with tweezers. Supporters of the change cite what they feel is low voter turnout. Moving the elections from April to coincide with the November general elections would increase participation, they suggest.
Perhaps. But if there is one thing worse than an uninvolved electorate, it's an uninformed electorate.
School elections have been held in the spring deliberately to separate them from the party politics of the fall elections. Piggybacking school board elections onto the November general elections would inevitably draw partisan politics into the mix.
School board candidates would likely align themselves with a slate of candidates for other offices. Members of a board of education who are beholden to a party organization would be compromised.
Currently, school board members are more likely to be tied to a home-school association than the Fourth Ward Regular Democratic Organization. That’s a good thing. I’d rather have school board members who are associated with school groups than the local poobah of the Republican or Democratic county committee.
If people aren’t going to vote, they can’t be forced. Dumbing down an important election to make it easier for disinterested people to vote corrupts the whole process. If simply getting people to the polls is the goal, offer free beer or something. But don’t expect too many extra informed voters.
In many towns, the April school elections attract more attention than the municipal elections. There are more signs in the for school board candidates than there are for furniture liquidation sales.
The other part of the proposal would eliminate the opportunity for voters to approve or defeat a school budget except when the spending plan would exceed the annual spending cap. Yes, it is a little silly that the school budget is the only government spending plan in which voters have a direct say.
Municipal, county, state and federal are not subject to voter approval. And yes, it’s true that even when budgets are defeated, the state education commissioner can step in and restore any cuts made in response to the defeat. The vote does sound like a pointless exercise.
But it’s not. Having served on the Pequannock Township Board of Education, I know firsthand the importance of crafting a budget that a board can sell to the public. The process requires the board members to get out to home-school associations, civic clubs and even hardware stores to explain the details of how their millions of dollars will be spent.
It's way to keep them honest, so to speak. Satisfied voters are more likely to pass budgets than dissatisfied voters. While not scientific, budget votes can often be viewed as referendums on the approval or disapproval of the school system in general.
Leave the election in April.
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