Does the school board make better decisions because it is elected by districts? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    School board chair Cindy Winstead raised an interesting issue at the May meeting while discussing Senate Bill 236. That's the bill that would allow the county commission to assume responsibility for school facilities, not only just funding but the management of those facilities, including where new schools would be built and the specifications for those schools. As it is now, once the commissioners appropriate the money the school board determines how it will be used. The Observer has documented that the current system resulted in a $20 million waste in Beaufort County from the $33 million school bond issue.

    Winstead argued (you can hear her comments in the video at the link above) that the school board was better equipped to manage school facilities than the county commission is because, among other things, they are elected by districts while the county commission is elected at large, with the limited voting system. I think district election versus at large election is an interesting issue to ponder.

    But I will say upfront that while I think the limited voting system, whereby each voter gets one vote each two-year election cycle with the top vote getters being elected to the seats to be filled, has many flaws, what Mrs. Winstead claims is NOT one of them. In fact, history shows just the opposite.

    The school board has nine districts. Only the people in each district can vote for the representative from that district in a "non-partisan" election every four years. The county commission has four seats open in one biennial election and three in the alternate elections. Each voter can vote for one person every two years, thus the moniker "limited voting." So if you think about it, a given voter has twice as much voting strength on the county commission than he/she has on the school board.

    But beyond the individual voter's electoral strength, the accountability for the two boards is very different, and here is where Mrs. Winstead's argument is fatally flawed.

    A county commissioner gets elected by corralling enough votes from across the county. Thus, it could be argued that any voter, no matter where they live, is a potential voter for or against (and against is important) each commissioner candidate. Few, if any, candidates will feel accountable only to the voters in a small geographical area, but rather must consider that any potential voter must be appealed to no matter where the voter lives. And of course, a potential voter is important not only because of whether they will vote for you, but also whether they will vote for one of your particular opponents.

    Looked at from another perspective one can argue that a county commissioner is more representative of "the people" because he/she represents 33,012 registered voters while each school board member, on average, represents only 1/9 as many registered voters.

    Jerry Langley, in the candidates' forum before the last election, when asked whether he would favor abolishing the Limited Voting system said: "No. The current system makes every commissioner accountable to every voter in the county." And he is right.

    Consider an example. Suppose the parents in Chocowinity want something done about the overcrowding in their schools. Under the district system they would have one vote. Under the commissioner system they could appeal to any one of seven commissioner, none of whom would be very wise to disregard the precinct that has the heaviest vote each election. When you study the numbers you find that a block of voters in Chocowinity could have elected two commissioner each biennial election if they orchestrated their voting strength right. There were twice as many voters in the Chocowinity and Gilead precincts as there was a margin of victory in each biennial election. Thus, effectively organized, the Chocowinity student attendance area could have elected a majority on the county commission.

    But the important thing is, again, whether they elected four commissioners or not, as Mr. Langley says, all seven commissioners will view, if they're wise, that they represent that area. Every commission vote is accountable to Chocowinity.

    We'll spare you a discussion of the "split the vote" phenomenon, but that too gives more electoral strength to an effectively organized interest group.

    The single member district system on the other hand does just the opposite. It weakens the voting strength of each voter and makes only one board member accountable to the voters in each of nine districts.

    Take Chocowinity again as an example. That attendance area has, for all practical intents and purposes, only two seats, and one of those seats is actually more accountable to another attendance area than it is to Chocowinity. Thus, if the parents who have children in overcrowded schools in Chocowinity want something done about their schools they go to Terry Williams, who represents most of the Chocowinity attendance area on the school board. If he turns them down they have only one more board member they can appeal to and that member (E. C. Peed at present) knows that she is not elected by the voters in the Chocowinity but rather those in Aurora. And the same is true with the other districts. Each of the nine members knows they are accountable to only one or two school attendance areas.

    So what happens in a district system is that individual board members end up having to find four more votes to get something they want done. Thus, in the Chocowinity example, if the parents in Chocowinity get Mr. Williams to agree to what they want, then he/they must get four more votes on the nine-member board.

    I've been a student of school board politics for over forty years and I have seen it time and time again, what actually happens is that individual school board members wheel and deal behind the scenes to get what they want.

    For example, let's say a specific school community wants an addition to a building in their attendance area. And let's assume they get the representative from that district to agree they need the addition. So that member brings it up at a meeting and learns that, let's say three other board members agree it is a need that should be funded. He's still short one vote. So he goes to one of those not in favor of building the addition and strikes a deal that he will support building a weight room at a school in one of the other member's district if they will support the addition at another school.

    Sometimes, it is not even negotiated. I have worked with dozens of projects that were designed to appeal enough to a majority of board members so as to be acceptable. Every superintendent knows this game. They have to live with it all the time.

    It plays out not only in facilities, but also in programs. If the school system gets money to implement a new program but does not have enough funding to do so in every school, then the horse trading, explicitly or implicitly, determines where it will go.

    But the absolute worst abomination that comes from the single member district system is in personnel.

    I did a number of studies on school systems in Eastern North Carolina and found in nearly every case that single member board districts resulted in the board member from that district having disproportionately more power to select personnel within his/her district than did other members or the superintendent.

    Here's how it works. A principalship becomes vacant in a school in District A. The superintendent follows a screening process to whittle down the candidates. As often as not when they get down to 1-3 candidates the superintendent checks with the board member for District A. You get the idea.

    In fact the first principalship I was selected for went like this. I was recruited by an assistant superintendent who just happened to live in the district the school was located in. I had worked in that attendance area before leaving for a job in a neighboring school district. He called me and asked me to apply and very subtly dropped the fact that the school board member from that district wanted me to return. So I went over one Saturday morning and interviewed with the superintendent. He sat for over an hour talking about everything from his golf game to his last fishing trip. I left that morning assuming I was not being considered because he asked me nothing that would have normally been asked in an interview. I learned later that the decision had already been made when the board member suggested to the superintendent that he ought to "take a look at" me. So to whom was I accountable? Variations of that scenario are repeated over and over again in single member district systems.

    Two years before, I had applied in another school system. It was a city school system with a seven member board elected at large. (Back before the Voting Rights Act). I interviewed with the Director of Personnel, the Director of Secondary Education and finally the superintendent. I was recommended to the board and they approved it unanimously. Now, to whom was I accountable?

    I have even seen this game played out on school bus stops. If a parent wanted a bus stop at a particular place he/she called the school board member from that district. Few school board members will not "see what they can do" to satisfy that parent over such an insignificant thing. One district we did a study on even labeled those "board stops" with one color pin on the map and other stops with different color pins. I've seen it play out on the filling of teacher, assistant, and even janitorial positions.

    You may be interested in a corollary. I led a team that once did a study of the Beaufort County and Washington City school districts. Both had at-large electoral systems at the time (before merger and the nine-member single member district system was put in). I examined five years of board minutes from each system. We found that in one system the previous two years there had not been one dissenting vote cast. You figure out what was going on there.

    I asked the then county board chair how they made their decisions as a board. He told me: "Jimmy and I get together the week before every board meeting. We review the superintendent's agenda and what he is going to recommend. If we agree we call one of the other three board members and get one to vote with us." So on a 5-member board, two people wielded the power. If the two strong members agreed they could always find one of the other three who would go along. They had short meetings.

    Some say the at-large system is not good because, as is the case with the Beaufort County Commission, disproportionately more seats come from one geographical area. But that has not proven to be the driving force in facilities decision-making with this school board. The Washington attendance area got disproportionately more of the forty million bond money than did the rest of the county. And that was true with both the district-elected school board and the at-large elected county commission. The reason less money was spent on classrooms in the most overcrowded and fastest growing attendance area (Chocowinity) was because the school board representative and the county commissioner who lived in that area were much less effective than some of the other board members. They simply did not represent the needs of their area as well as some other board members did for their area. And interestingly, the bond issue would not have passed had Chocowinity voted against it. Chocowinity was promised that its needs would be addressed in "Phase II" but the school board spent all the Phase II money elsewhere and I would contend that happened because of ineffective leadership from the board member and county commissioner from that area.

    So when you analyze it you find that Mrs. Winstead is wrong. Single member district boards are not more representative than at-large elected boards. It all depends. Usually what it depends on is leadership - both board leadership and superintendent leadership.

    Put another way, which system is best depends not on the electoral system so much as it does on the quality of the board members.

    And that brings us back to the real flaw in the Beaufort County school board system. What happens as often as not is that there are few, if any, contested seats each time. In fact, it is frequent that only one person runs for office. And once a person serves long enough to gain name recognition you seldom have a contested election if that person chooses to run.

    Some have argued that appointed boards, such as the community college board, are a better way to select board members. I once served as superintendent of a combination board. Six were elected and three appointed. What I learned was that it did not matter how a board member got their seat. What mattered was the quality of leadership they brought to the job. And neither the elected members nor the appointed members were better leaders, per se. Some of the best members were elected and some of the best members were appointed.

    What I learned in my experience of over forty years is that it is not the electoral system that matters as much as the quality of the people who serve. And common sense tells you that if you carve up a county into districts you're less likely to find enough quality people in every district to insure the election of top quality board members. The proof of that is seen in the number of uncontested school board races over the last several years.

    My personal belief is that S 236 is a good idea simply because it creates a balance of power approach to spending millions of dollars on school facilities. What we need is a school board that works closely with the county commission in making the decisions. And that balance of power is the best hope we have of the backroom dealing not being the way the decisions are made.

    But we'll see. My suspicion is that S 236 will not pass. But if it does we'll see if a separation of powers approach will work or not.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.