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School
Days
Governing
the Academy in Virginia
Local
school boards seem to be in the news recently.
Richmond is debating whether to move from an elected
to an appointed model. In Washington, D.C., there is
tension between the mayor and his school board on
who should run the schools.
As with other political and administrative oddities
in the commonwealth, school boards here differ from
the rest of the country. Virginia refers to its
school districts as “school divisions” -- and that
is more than a vagary of language. In most
states, a school district is a separate local
government, but in Virginia, it is a political
subdivision of the state. This means that school
divisions in the Old Dominion depend on
appropriations and budget approvals from the local
county, city or town governments they serve.
Virginia has 134 school divisions and thus 134
school boards. The divisions correspond to counties
or independent cities; although in some cases a
school division might include a city and a nearby
county, such as Williamsburg and James City County.
Of the state’s school boards, 109 or 81 percent
are elected. This is somewhat less than the 96
percent average nationwide. In jurisdictions where
school board members are appointed,
legislative bodies, such as city councils, typically make
the decisions. In Lexington, for example,
individuals who wish to serve a three-year- term on
the local school board must fill out an application
at the city manager’s office; the city
council then holds a public hearing on all the
candidates.
School boards have a long history in the nation,
according to Deborah Land, a Johns Hopkins
researcher who summarized the development of school
boards in a paper published by the Education
Commission of the States. They date back 200 years
to the selectmen form of local government in
Massachusetts. As populations grew, and governing
became more complex, selectmen separated general
governing duties from school governing
responsibilities; they appointed committees to
oversee schools. The committees eventually evolved
into boards modeled after corporate boards. The
first state school board was formed in Massachusetts
in 1837, but local boards retained control in part
because they distrusted governing from afar.
By the late 1800s, school boards in urban areas were
elected by local wards or neighborhoods. This
resulted in school board members becoming involved
in local ward politics. (Echoes of the similar views
are sometimes expressed today by those supporting
appointed boards.) As a result, school boards became
more centralized and lay members were elected in
city-wide or county-wide elections, instead of to
individual ward boards.
Virginia, of course, did not follow this model. The
appointment of school board members was mandatory in
the state until 1992, when the General Assembly
finally allowed elected boards.
While there is an abundance of statistics on public
education in the U.S., school boards have been
studied less. In 2002, the American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research issued a
report, "School Boards at the Dawn of the 21st
Century," by University of Virginia researcher
Frederick M. Hess. He surveyed 2,000 school
districts throughout the U.S. and the groups of
people that govern them.
Among his findings:
● Boards
are 61.1 percent male and 38.9 percent female; in
smaller districts boards are more heavily male than
in larger districts;
● Board
members spend 25 hours per week on board matters –
more in larger districts;
● Two-thirds
of the respondents reported that they received no
salary; less than 4 percent earned $10,000 or
more;
● 96 percent of board
members surveyed are elected; the majority of
elections cost candidates $1,000 or less but in
large districts, 40 percent reported costs of $5,000
or more;
● The mean length of service among board
member respondents is 6.7 years.
Six years is a long time for little or no pay!
School boards are lightening rods for all the
divisive issues of the day and held responsible when
schools don’t perform or budgets soar.
Still, as the Virginia School Boards Association
announces on its website, the boards, no matter how
they are chosen, continue “the unique American
tradition of local control of and accountability for
the Commonwealth’s schools.”
NEXT: Outside School Walls: Home schooling in
Virginia
--
Sept. 4, 2007
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