Bill to make school board elections non-partisan moving forward - Daily Local News 06/21/2012

Daily Local News (http://www.dailylocal.com),Serving Chester County, PA, PA.

News »Local »

Bill to make school board elections non-partisan moving forward

By ERIC S. SMITH
esmith@dailylocal.com
Thursday, June 21,2012

A bill that would allow all elections for local school board members to be completely non-partisan and not have any party affiliations with any candidates has cleared the state Senate Education Committee.

The committee approved the bill on a 10-1 vote with Senate Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-25th, of Jefferson County, as the lone dissenter. A representative from Scarnati’s office did not return a request for comment on Wednesday.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland, introduced the bill after two separate incidents in Chester County. Dinniman, the minority chairman of the committee and Committee Chairman Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-15th, of Dauphin County held a public hearing on the bill in Downingtown in May.

“It is time for Pennsylvania to join almost every other state in the nation by doing away with partisan school board elections and by putting the power back in the hands of the voters,” Dinniman said in a written statement after the bill passed committee. “By doing so, we can shift the focus of school board elections from political posturing to the real educational and fiscal issues at stake.”

The two recent incidents in Chester County that motivated Dinniman to craft the legislation were in the Owen J. Roberts School District and the West Chester Area School District.

Dinniman said the non-partisan elections could limit the power of lame-duck school boards. In Owen J. Roberts, the board essentially changed hands during the May primary, but the board members remained in place until December and fired the superintendent without any electoral consequence.

“By eliminating partisan school board elections... we can effectively prevent lame-duck school boards that sometimes make major decisions in their last months in office,” Dinniman said in a written statement.

Dinniman said another major issue with partisan elections for school boards is that local political committees choose their preferred candidates and then primary voters can only choose from those pre-screened by the committees. Furthermore, he said Independents do not have any voice in a primary election.

“Residents, parents, teachers and taxpayers deserve to have a direct say in choosing school board leaders that represent their views, instead of being forced to pick between candidates tapped by local political committees,” Dinniman said.

In the recent school board elections in West Chester, the Republican committee chose certain candidates and reportedly had strict restriction on whom they would nominate. In turn, a large group of write-in candidates mounted a campaign and one of them successfully won a seat on the board. Under Dinniman’s bill, that write-in procedure would not be necessary as candidates would only be required to obtain a certain number of signatures from registered voters in their district depending on the size of the district.

For example, candidates in West Chester would need 100 signatures, because of a district population that exceeds 100,000 residents. In Owen J. Roberts or Phoenixville only 50 signatures would be needed since those districts have around 25,000 people.

Follow staff writer Eric S. Smith on Twitter @dailylocaleric.
URL: http://www.dailylocal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120621/NEWS01/120629910&template=printart
© 2012 Daily Local News (http://www.dailylocal.com),Serving Chester County, PA, PA.