COMMENTARY
Rod Watson: Going beyond baby steps in school reform
One victim of the State Senate stalemate is the bid to move Buffalo School Board elections to November.
The proposed shift is an effort to entice the uninterested to vote for candidates they’re uninformed about. It’s a direct result of the pathetic 5 percent turnout in the May 5 board elections.
But maybe reformers are thinking too small. Perhaps a more drastic change is in order: Take away the vote. Or enhance it.
With a new School Board seated last night that may not buy into the superintendent’s reform plans despite recent academic gains, such policy lurches—no matter who the superintendent is—are Exhibit A in the critics’ argument against an elected board.
Combine the anemic turnout with the inordinate influence of unions and business groups and internecine fighting for the board presidency, and board elections can be a recipe for instability and dismal statistics such as the district’s 52 percent graduation rate.
Critics would get rid of elections and return to the pre-1973 era when the board was appointed. Such a change would concentrate responsibility with the city’s chief elected official, instead of diffusing it among nine board members. “If [residents] knew the mayor made the appointments, they would know whom to hold accountable,” said Donald Van Every, a two-time former School Board member.
It also would more directly tie the city’s fate to that of the school system, Van Every added, making clear the importance for the district to attract middle-class families.
Teachers union chief Phil Rumore takes a different view, asking, “What’s broken?”
He says that improvements such as smaller classes and more counselors— read “more money”—are the answer and warns that an appointed board could become “political.”
But attorney Steven H. Polowitz would go even further. Noting that the district has no taxing power, he would eliminate the board altogether and have the mayor, with other officials, appoint a chancellor to run things, as is done in New York and some other large cities.
Polowitz, a charter school activist, recalled a former superintendent’s effort to establish district charters, an initiative thwarted when an election suddenly changed the board.
“This is what you see, time in and time out,” Polowitz said of such shifts. “Hire an effective chancellor and get out of the way.”
That sounds anti-democratic to me; but with a 5 percent turnout, there’s not much democracy going on, anyway.
About 90 percent of districts have elected boards, said a National Association of School Boards official, who said a change usually is driven by a crisis.
Buffalo’s graduation rate, alone, meets that definition.
“I think there’s a better idea, though,” said Samuel L. Radford III, co-chairman of the Buffalo Local Action Committee and an educational activist.
Instead of doing away with elections, he would expand them by giving Buffalo residents the right to vote on school budgets, just as suburban residents do. That annual vote could attract more interest and make urban schools far more accountable.
“We’re getting different results because we’re applying different systems,” Radford said.
Any such changes would require state legislation, and perhaps a referendum. But they are worth thinking about while waiting on Albany to decide on a baby step.
Less democracy or more for folks who don’t use it now?
Either way, by just shifting the date of the election, reformers may be thinking too small.
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