Some schools boards are switching from appointed to elected

6/4/02 – While there's much talk about transforming elected school boards in large cities into appointed boards, the trend in Alabama is in the opposite direction.

After an April general election then a runoff three weeks later, voters in Birmingham, Ala., elected nine school board members. The new board will replace the five-member board appointed by the city council.

In Birmingham, four members of the appointed board campaigned to keep their seats. Only one, Virginia Volker, was successful. Only 18 percent of Birmingham's registered voters voted in the first election, and 12.5 percent voted in the runoff.

Nationally, 96 percent of school board members in the United States are elected.

But many of the largest urban districts, including Boston; New York City; Chicago; Philadelphia; Detroit; Baltimore County; and Baltimore City, have appointed boards. And elected boards in other cities are increasingly targeted for takeover by mayors or governors.

In San Francisco, Mayor Willie Brown has called for a ballot measure this fall to give voters the opportunity to approve a return to an appointed board, which the district had until 1972. And New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to eliminate the school board.

Birmingham's switch to an elected board results from an Alabama constitutional amendment enacted in 1999 that smoothed the process for districts to change how school board members are selected.

The amendment removed the requirement of statewide voter approval for constitutional amendments for each district and allows local communities to simply vote on whether they want an elected board.

The Alabama Association of School Boards (AASB) opposed the law. "We are not opposed to elected school boards," says spokesperson Susan Salter. "We think the decision should be made locally after thoughtful and unemotional debate about what method would yield the best candidates."

"If the process is too easy," Salter says, "we were concerned that after a single unpopular decision by the school board a small group in the community could pursue a change before the community has a chance to stop and reflect on what is the best method."

Eight districts in Alabama, including Tuscaloosa, have made or are in the process of making the switch from an appointed board to an elected one since the 1999 law was enacted.

The state's other urban districts, including Montgomery and Mobile, are in county districts. Another Alabama law requires all 67 of counties to have elected school boards.

Several districts across the nation have recently switched from appointed to elected boards. The Muscogee County, Ga., school district made the change in 1994.

The New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School District in Indiana also moved from an elected to an appointed board.

On May 7, voters elected four school board members to join three other sitting board members. Voters endorsed the change one year ago. Another Indiana district, Twin Lakes, is switching from an appointed to an elected board this year.

This fall, voters in Cleveland will vote on whether to retain an appointed school board–a system in place since 1998–or return to an elected board.

Neither NSBA's Delegate Assembly nor the Council of Urban Boards of Education has taken a position on the narrow issue of appointed boards versus elected boards. But both strongly oppose school district takeovers by mayors or governors involving the removal of governance responsibility from local school boards.

NSBA advocates local control of school districts. "All school board members–elected or appointed–should focus heavily on improving academic achievement of all students in the community," says Reginald Felton, NSBA's director of federal relations, as well as an elected school board member in Montgomery County, Md.

Frequently, large funding increases accompany takeovers–which mutes opposition to the loss of local control. That's what happened in Baltimore and Cleveland, where the elected boards were ousted, and in Prince George's County, Md., where state lawmakers recently replaced the elected board with an appointed one.

"Suddenly there are increased resources, additional development of staff, funding for facilities, all these things that local boards were seeking prior to whatever problems they were experiencing," Felton says "Had those resources been available before, perhaps those districts could have avoided many problems that resulted in the installation of appointed boards."