PA district settles suit over minority representation on school board
The Bethlehem Area School Board, in a 9-0 vote, has approved a settlement agreement to a 2006 voters' rights lawsuit that, if accepted, by a federal judge, will change the way voters elect school directors, with the overall goal of helping a Hispanic win a seat on the board, which is all non-Hispanic whites. ''I resent the federal government sticking their hands in what we are doing,'' said Director Charlene Koch, a longstanding critic of the settlement. ''But I will vote yes. Not because I think it is right or wrong, but because I think the Latino community needs to heal.'' The class-action lawsuit was filed in February 2006 by residents Olga Negron and Ramonita Garcia after the school board filled a vacancy with a non-Hispanic white school director who had just lost an election, rather than one of two Hispanic candidates. The lawsuit sought to break the district into nine regional seats. Then as both sides finalized the settlement agreement in preparation for Monday's vote, the board triggered more resentment. Directors, faced with another board vacancy, bypassed a Hispanic man in favor of a white man last month. Barbara Sicalides, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, said Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. will hold a hearing where he is expected to finalize the deal.
Under the current at-large election system, all Bethlehem school directors represent the entire district. The board's newly approved system would have six at-large seats, but three seats representing smaller regions. After six years, the settlement says, the board can petition federal court to end the mixed system if it can prove Hispanics have won election to the school board. Finally, the settlement allows the board in 10 years to go back to the old way if the board feels the settlement has not worked or if demographics shift to the point that it violates the one-person, one-vote rule. School Director Rosario Amato, the only board member to vote for a Hispanic in both vacancy decisions, said the board has no one to blame but itself for the settlement outcome. He said directors should have heeded public comment at the time and appointed a Hispanic in 2006 or 2008. “It's like we're talking out of both sides of our mouth when we preach diversity,'' Amato said. ''It should have been a no-brainer: You pick a Latino.''
Source: Allentown Morning Call, 4/22/08, By Steve Esack
[Editor’s Note: Vote dilution claims focused on school board elections under the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) drew attention in 1990s, as reported in the 1992 Education Week article below. The 2002 NSBA report at the next link found, among other things, that more than 56% of members responding to the survey were elected at large, while 41% were elected by subdistrict. As a matter of good governance, at-large voting can reinforce the board members’ responsibilities to the district as a whole and discourage parochialism, but they can raise questions of fair representation. Hybrid systems like that approved in Hanover can reconcile these competing values, but they can be more complicated for voters, which can have implications for accountability.
The U.S. Supreme Court has granted review in Bartlett v. Strickland, No. 07-689, a case from the North Carolina supreme court formerly captioned Pender County v. Bartlett, that raises the issue of whether a racial minority group that constitutes less than 50% of proposed voting district's population can state a vote dilution claim under the VRA. In a decision at the third link below, the state high court found that the drawing of a state legislative district to lump minority voters from two counties together, in violation of the state constitution’s “whole county” rule, was not justified by the VRA’s protections against minority vote dilution, because the resulting district had only a 39% minority composition. The courts are split on this point.]
Education Week, 10/28/92, By Peter Schmidt
NSBA School Boards at the Dawn of the 21st Century report
Pender County v. Bartlett, 649 S.E.2d 364 (N.C. 2007)