Representative Paul Baumbach has re-introduced House Bill 92, which changes the term of a school board member from 5 years to 4 years. This change would only apply to school board members elected after December 31, 2021.
Now, in my opinion, we need a bill that schedules School Board elections to coincide with either the primary and general elections to boost turnout.
| House Bill 92 Sponsors | Yes Votes | No Votes |
| Baumbach, K.Williams, Chukwuocha, Mitchell, Wilson-Anton, M.Smith, Ramone | ||
| Sturgeon, Sokola, Hansen, Pinkney, Walsh | ||
| Current Status: House Education Committee 1/28/21 |
We also need background checks for school board members.
Barry, we are working on this. You should see it in the coming weeks.
I especially like the idea of thing school board elections to another election as that would boost participation.
What a great idea! Let’s have more people voting on offices they know nothing about! That’s sure to fix our schools.
Somebody’s going to have to convince me that something is broken here before I’m signing up to “fix” it.
They *should* know something about it since this is a vital function. Getting these elections out of their hiding places would at least provide some incentive for people to educate themselves and hear about candidates and plans. Part of the reason so many people don’t know is largely the effort of the professional school engagement lobby. They need for these elections to be hidden so that they can continue to limit public participation.
Lots of things *should* happen. They don’t. People already have enormous incentive to educate themselves. They don’t. Passing laws based on wishful thinking seldom leads to the desired results.
Do you really think bringing more of the anti-tax zealots of Sussex County into the voting booths will to *improve* them? If so, have you ever been to Sussex County east of Route 1?
It’s not wishful thinking to disrupt the Ed Industry’s capture of school board elections, which only happens when they are aligned with all of the rest of the state’s (and most municipalities’) elections. If the anti-tax zealots in Sussex already show up to vote their interests. If the pool of voters gets expanded and they work harder at killing their schools, so be it.
Has anyone thought like me that one of the reasons we have such absurdly low SB turnouts is that we have absurdly too many school boards, a legacy of Delaware’s segregation and white flight past? I also learned from my school board reform days in Houston, way back sadly, that the conservative move to change our board seats to local areas, not at large, while sounding more democratic to many, eliminated the opportunity to run reformist SLATES to initiate major change across the districts and engage the electorate for better turnout. This had the same effect of increasing local patronage and corruption while diminishing any opportunity for major reform. Democracy was suppressed and resulted in education disaster for Houston which in the 70’s was a major innovator with huge and creative structures to try to diminish white flight. Sadly, the policies and innovations to do so utterly failed and the chance for creative diversity was eliminated. Which is exactly what the suburban/exurban racist Republicans were striving for.