Editorials

483 and 379 reasons

To make school elections more democratic

"If voters can vote for president and governor and senator and congressman and mayor and state representative and dog catcher on the real Election Day, school districts should be able--indeed, they should be obliged--to elect the members of their school boards on that day, too."

--Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tuesday, Sept. 16

The point is made yet again: Most folks just don't vote in school board elections, and our schools, not to mention our democracy, suffer because of it.

Take a gander at a couple of elections in Central Arkansas, if you can stand it: Joy Springer defeated incumbent Norma Jean Johnson for a seat on Little Rock's school board 483 to 227. Four hundred and eighty-three people. That was enough to win a school board seat in the state's largest school district. A grand total of 710 voters turned out for an election in a zone of the state's most populous school district. Pitiful.

In another race for school board in the same district, Jim Ross defeated incumbent Jody Carreiro with even fewer votes, winning 379 to 221. Still pitiful.

All this means that less than a thousand people may have determined the direction of Little Rock's school board over the next few years. No matter what any of us may think of the relative merits of Joy Springer and Jim Ross, or lack of same, surely there should be more people making these decisions in what's called a democracy.

Things were even worse in North Little Rock, where one race was won with 310 votes, and another with . . . 185.

One hundred and eighty-five. In a winning effort, at that.

Don't blame the winners in these elections. They did what they had to do: They knocked on doors, they put up signs, they went to forums and talked about their ideas. It isn't their fault most people don't vote in these elections. After all, most voters only go to the polls on--shocker--Election Day.

So why are school board elections held in September?

Because insiders like it that way. Better the public doesn't pay too much attention to school board races. After all, if the masses turned out to vote in school board races, they might elect the wrong people. The teachers' unions who hold so much power in this state's school districts--from classrooms to front offices--will make sure their people get to the polls. And who cares about the rest?

If union bosses can just get, say, 185 or so of their people to the polls, they'll retain their control of the "democratic" process--which ain't so democratic when school elections are segregated from all others, the better to dictate their outcome.

Those who've set up this cozy deal over the years might tell you, with a straight face, that the November ballot is just too full. And school board races would get lost in the confusion.

Don't believe it. You'd even be forgiven for thinking that those making that argument don't believe it, either. They're not that dumb, and neither are the people of Arkansas, who'd surely come out to vote if school elections were held on the same day as all the others.

"The ballot is too crowded" is just one more transparent excuse used by the power brokers to keep control in the right hands--their own. Even if it would be, shall we say, impolitic to admit it.

There is a solution: Come early next year, the Legislature meets in regular session. Our lawmakers can change this rotten system, even if they'll need a vote of the people to do it. It's worth a try. Just to see if the words on the state seal--Regnat Populus, the People Rule--still have any meaning when it comes to school elections.

Editorial on 09/22/2014

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