School Board issue isn’t new

Julian Ferras helped collect thousands of signatures on petitions to give Richmond voters a chance to vote on whether to elect the city's School Board.

"We organized people to work the grocery stores and corners -- every place we knew there would be a crowd of people," said Ferras, director of the Richmond Education Association, the union for city school teachers.

The result was a 1993 referendum in which more than 80 percent of voters supported electing the board -- a right that a group of 26 business leaders last month proposed taking away and replacing with a modified method of appointing members to the board.

It's an idea that has raised strong feelings on both sides and resurrected a debate that raged for years in the Virginia General Assembly before the state finally gave local governments the option of electing their school boards 15 years ago.

"Going to an appointed board is going to take away the voice and the involvement of parents and citizens in the system," Ferras said last week.

But critics of the elected board say the current system prevents the public from holding the right people accountable for the performance of public schools -- the mayor and City Council, who hold the power of the purse.

"If I can't raise the money, I don't have the authority," said Clarence L. Townes Jr., a retired businessman and former School Board chairman who signed the Aug. 3 letter calling for an end to School Board elections in Richmond.

Townes was the School Board's last chairman under the appointed system. He opposed elections then, as he does now. And he does not support the idea of giving the School Board the power to raise taxes to pay for education.

The lack of taxing power was a key issue in the perennial legislative debate over whether to allow school board elections in Virginia, which was the last state in the country to deny the option.

When the legislature finally approved the idea in 1992, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder said it "can't be anything but good" as he signed the bill into law.

But since becoming Richmond mayor three years ago, Wilder has changed his mind as he battled with the School Board over how to improve the system's performance and reduce operating costs. His education advisory committee was the first to float the idea of returning to appointing the board instead of electing it.

The Richmond City Council debated the same issue in 1992 after the legislature changed the law. The council voted against putting the issue to voters in a referendum. One of the opponents of an elected school board then was Henry W. "Chuck" Richardson, who represented the 5th District.

"You throw the School Board into the political game," Richardson said recently. "They must feel the political winds before they are able to make a decision."

Rayford L. Harris Sr., who was School Board chairman during the 1992 debate, said he prefers an appointed system, but not exactly the way it used to be, which also was political. He likes the idea proposed by the business community to create a nominating committee -- appointed by the council with the mayor's involvement -- that would screen candidates in each district.

"I think you'd get a better quality person that way," Harris said.

Former Mayor Roy A. West has a different opinion. West, a former city school principal, supported the election of the School Board, and he's deeply offended by the business community's proposal.

"I'm aghast at the present move to disenfranchise people," West said.

West predicted that any attempt to end School Board elections in Richmond would run afoul of the federal Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Department of Justice has confirmed that it would review any proposed change in the city's election process.

"This is the only place I know in my lifetime where you have a proposal to actually take the vote away," he said. "It boggles the mind."
Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or .