Virginia Needs a Constitutional Amendment to Elect the Board of Education
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26 responses to “Virginia Needs a Constitutional Amendment to Elect the Board of Education”
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Damn good idea, Sherlock!
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You make a good case Captain. My fear about electing the state school board and superintendent is this:
Will voters be informed enough to make good choices?
Will voters care?
If the ballots on election day are jammed pack full of names I worry about ballot fatigue and people making careless choices.
If the vote is held at off times such as June will there be a significant turnout or will a limited number of hyper excited voters sway that election?-
Are voters sufficiently informed in any other election? Why should this one be different?
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I have seen the results of elected school boards and suggest that the devil you know may be better than the one you don’t. Would a provision in the Constitution providing for judicial review be preferable?
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There is a provision in Code of Virginia § 2.2-4014. Legislative review of proposed and final regulations that lets the GA suspend and cancel a rule, but with Democratic majorities in both houses, a vote to file with the Registrar and the promulgating agency an objection to a proposed or final adopted regulation will not occur. The last thing many Democratic GA members want is to have to take a recorded vote on CRT-based regulations or Social Emotional Learning. If we want accountability, the VBOE will have to run for election themselves.
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I have to say, Dick, Bill, and James raise legitimate points. The current system sucks. But elected school Board of Education members likely suck, too. Think about it. Now that government employee unions are legal in Virginia, who do you think would dominate the Board of Education elections? The unions! Once union-backed BOE board members get in, they’ll never be evicted.
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Yep, be careful what you wish for.
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See my reply to Steve below. You are too pessimistic about the voters in this case. Politicians can slip a lot by them, but not how their kids are educated.
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It’s a shame, but the vast majority of parents don’t know very much what their students do in school. Usually, it only becomes a problem if the kid comes home and complains about something. Most parents are kept busy working for a living, paying bills, taking kids to practice, etc.
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This was a bad idea before the introduction of full unionization in the public schools, and now an even worse one.
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I reject the theory that VBOE candidates supported by teachers unions will win elections. More than 2 million prospective voters in Virginia have kids in public schools. There are 104,000 teachers. Do the math.
The situation now is that no Governor ever ran on CRT in education, but we have it.
VBOE members are the only officers of the state whose powers and duties are defined in the constitution who are not voted into office.
Absent candidates for the VBOE running on CRT in education being elected by the majority of the people of Virginia in an open election, it is an affront to democracy.
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Reject it all you want. That don’t make it so. The Governor should appoint and as the accountable figure should have the power to fire. At the pleasure….
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The governor serves one four year term and cannot stand for re-election. That structure, along with endless appointees who serve without direct consent of the electorate, makes for a backwards system where lasting progress is all but impossible.
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Damn bad idea, Sherlock!
Marxist indoctrination system? Give me a break! I don’t even know what that means. Also, you greatly overestimate the power of the BOE over local school boards. I certainly have not heard anyone complaining about” Marxist indoctrination” in the Henrico schools or any of the school system in this area or in Halifax County or other rural counties. This whole critical race theory thing is just another boogeyman chased by conservatives who want to deny that racism is the basis of a lot of the lack of progress of a large segment of society and that, although a lot of progress has been made, there is still latent racism in today’s society.
And as James Whitehead has indicated, having members of a state agency board popularly elected will just cause confusion among the electorate.
Don’t like the education policy of the current Governor, Secretary of Education, and Superintendent of Instruction (the latter official is much more important than the Board)? Elect a Governor from a different party, who will appoint a new Secretary of Education and Superintendent of Instruction. Don’t like the policies in the local schools? Elect different members of the local school board.
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Halifax County has formed an anti CRT group. They are actively recruiting a slate of candidates to replace the current school board. They intend to not only root out the school board but also the superintendent as well as upper level management. The Halifax group has a broad base that stretches across the lines of class and race. Much of what is happening across the Commonwealth is off the radar of local media and local elected figures.
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If the Halifax anti-CRT group is broad, it is mighty quiet. There has been nothing in the two local papers about it nor have there been recent letters to the editor complaining about “Marxist indoctrination” in the county schools.
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Mighty quiet by design.
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I’ll finish that last paragraph for you. “don’t like the regulations published by the VBOE, elect different members”. Oh, that’s right, we can’t.
I admit, however, that you nailed me with the “confused electorate” trope. Good one.
And how, exactly, do I overestimate the power of the VBOE over the school boards? Do they have the option to ignore the Virginia Administrative Code regulations?
Then there is this: “This whole critical race theory thing is just another boogeyman chased by conservatives”. What rock have you been living under to make that statement?
Critical theory itself originated in the Frankfurt School, group of researchers associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, who applied Marxism to a radical interdisciplinary social theory.
Critical race theory came to fruition in American academia more than 30 years ago. It postulates that racism is the driving force in society, that in order to understand power relations, in order to understand institutions such as the law, education, the Constitution, social relations, you have to understand that through the lens of race.
It is reflected in everything VDOE has done in the last four years at least. Go to the home page of the VBOE at https://www.doe.virginia.gov/boe/index.shtml and read the Statement from the Virginia Board of Education posted there, front and center. CRT 101.
For the really failing school districts like Richmond, Petersburg and others, CRT serves as a diversion mechanism.
These schools where huge numbers of students cannot read, write or multiply in the fourth grade are shifting the blame to racism. The self-servingly ignore the fact that in many cases, schools with black majority teachers and administrators have failed for decades to educate black kids in the very basics of what they’re going to need to succeed in life.
So we have this really evil paradox where these institutions that are perpetuating inequalities are positioning themselves as the great fighters of inequality.
I think they are amazed they are getting away with it. You apparently are not.
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More of what I call “Richmond logic”. Stupid citizens can’t be trusted with democracy. The state should be run by a small cabal of insiders who thwart the will of the people with impunity. Excessive gerrymandering, no term limits (except, bizarrely, the tightest term limit for governor), unlimited campaign contributions, no provision for recalls, no citizen initiated referenda, off year elections … Virginia’s political architecture is designed for anti-democratic manipulation and corruption. This has led to a long list of disgraceful behaviors including the 1902 Constitution (which was in force until 1971), Massive Resistance, an ongoing oligarchy of huge health care providers squeezing Virginians and a transportation system that is a national disgrace.
Somewhere, Harry Byrd is smiling.
It’s long past time to defang the Virginia state government and return power to the people. Even if the Richmond elite believe that they are smarter than the population in general.
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Reading these comments is fascinating. The Richmond based commentators seem to believe that the electorate is too stupid to be trusted with democracy. Commentators from outside Richmond believe that the more the public is engaged and the more that politicians are directly accountable to the voters, the better.
Does anybody really believe that the electorate could possibly install a worse Board of Education than the one we have now?
Atif Qani is a perfect example of appointed radicalism. The twice failed political candidate was appointed to be Virginia Secretary of Education by Ralph Northam. Since taking office he has led an attempted radical rewrite of Virginia’s education system. He even compared preparing for a test to using performance enhancing drugs in sports. He couldn’t be elected dog catcher. But he can be (and was) appointed by Northam.
If “Democracy Thrives in Sunlight” then the glare of an election would certainly add illumination to the cesspool that is our state government in Richmond.
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At least in Fairfax County we can recall school board members. Perhaps needless to say, I signed the petition yesterday to recall the Dranesville District school board member, Elaine Tholen. While I was signing the petition a lot of other people were doing the same.
Contrary to “Richmond logic” the electorate is very engaged in matters of education in Fairfax County. And … we have some limited tools to force politicians who are incompetent and/or negligent to be accountable for their negligence and/or incompetence.
Refusing to reopen the schools (despite CDC guidance), implementing CRT, pursuing the left’s openly racist “too many Asians” philosophy and presiding over the general decline of public education in the county should get the school board members recalled.
Pity we don’t have such power at the state level. If we did, would Racist Ralph still be governor after those yearbook pictures became public?
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I did the same in Fauquier. Over a 1,000 signatures and the organizers are gathering them the old fashioned way.
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Well, it would give Conservatives something to do like in California… All that fire and fury… then ..bump… and start all over…
Then they have Disney…. I can smell a boycott:
Anti-racism, tattoos and no more ‘wench auctions’: Disney’s ‘woke’ moves spark a conservative backlash
Disney has taken steps toward inclusivity in recent years. Not everyone is a fan.” “We want to make sure everybody has the best time — that guests from all over the world can connect with the stories we share and that how we bring those to life are respectful of the diverse world we live in,” Chris Beatty, Walt Disney Imagineering creative portfolio executive, told D23, the official Disney fan club.”
Damn Liberals…now they’ve infested Disney!
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