COMMENTARY
Rod Watson: School Board election vital yet neglected
What if they held an election and nobody showed up? It may happen Tuesday—and that’s only a slight exaggeration. Despite all of the rhetoric about the importance of education, the importance of the school system and the importance of children, next week’s Buffalo School Board election will not be important enough for most folks to bother showing up.
According to Erie County Board of Elections data covering board races back to 1974, the high-water mark was 1992, when a mere 16 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Turnout was even boosted that year—if we can use that term—by a special election to fill an Assembly seat.
The low was 3 percent in 2001— that’s 3 percent of those who even bothered to register. If all adults were included, the turnout rate would be lower than today’s stock market returns.
That rampant apathy amounts to civic child neglect. It comes in the face of a disgraceful graduation rate of 46 percent and the fact that 10 schools remain on the state’s watch list.
Defenders note the end of social promotion and the fact that six schools were recently removed from the state list. Superintendent James A. Williams —whose fate could be determined by a new board majority—points to improvements in the lower grades as proof that reforms are taking hold.
No matter who’s right, the stakes are huge. But both defenders and critics will stay home in droves Tuesday.
“Other than moving it to November, I don’t know what else to do,” said Marlies Wesolowski, a former board member who also muses about letting city residents vote on school budgets, as suburban residents do. “Maybe that would get people out.”
The fact that most city residents don’t vote gives inordinate power to the few who do.
“Any political group can probably put someone in, because they have the foot soldiers and the phone banks,” says former board member Jack Coyle.
That’s hardly in the best interest of children, who become pawns to special interest agendas.
Samuel L. Radford III, co-chairman of the Buffalo Local Action Committee, thinks it’s no accident that school elections are scheduled in May, ostensibly to make them less political.
“People are conditioned to vote in September and November,” he said, adding that suburban residents get accustomed to voting regularly because they have school budget votes every spring.
With Buffalo holding school elections so sporadically—once every three or five years—it becomes “standard for people not to participate,” Radford said.
Not that suburban turnouts are all that great, either. But with high graduation and Regents diploma rates, suburbanites have less reason for outrage.
There’s no shortage of information for city voters. The Coalition for Economic Justice held a candidates forum and posted answers to key questions on its Web site at www.buffalojwj.org. The Buffalo Local Action Committee is holding a candidates forum from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m today in the Frank E. Merriweather Jr. Library on Jefferson Avenue.
What’s in short supply is not information, but commitment.
It’s particularly infuriating that blacks make up the largest demographic chunk—57 percent—of Buffalo’s enrollment. This is the group that fought hardest for the right to vote. Yet too many parents don’t think their children’s future matters enough to go to the polls and pick the people who will set educational policy.
And let’s face it: Voting in a School Board race is not that tough. After all, it’s not like you’ll have to stand in a long line.
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