The Winston-Salem Journal took a different tack from most major N.C. newspapers immediately after Election Day when it called for a nonpartisan Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education. The Journal’s editorial addressed a debate that has been brewing in Forsyth County for some time.

“It may just be time for such school-board elections in Forsyth, one of the state’s last holdouts for partisan school-board elections,” adding it may be “worth the effort to try to remove party politics from Forsyth school-board elections,” the Journal wrote. “That measure could help to remove politics from the board as well. It could also rejuvenate the board.”

Forsyth County’s unusual law

Ninety percent of school boards nationally are nonpartisan, and Forsyth County is the only metropolitan county and one of only 14 districts statewide that passed a local law allowing for partisan school board elections.

In order to make such a change, a member of the Forsyth County delegation to the General Assembly must introduce a local bill to lift the county’s exemption to the state statute calling for nonpartisan elections. However, a member of the delegation would introduce such a bill only with the support of the current school board.

Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment is aiming to prompt such change. CHANGE, which describes itself as a “non-partisan, multi-racial, multi-faith and multi-institutional organization” from “all economic backgrounds and a diversity of locations in Forsyth County,” has started another petition drive in support of a push for nonpartisan school board races.

CHANGE leaders said they have gathered 10,000 signatures, a response that should inspire necessary legislative support. The Journal reported that State Rep. Larry Womble of Forsyth and Rep. Earline Parmon plan to introduce a bill lifting Forsyth County’s 38-year exemption from state statute.

According to its Web site, CHANGE says education issues are, by nature nonpartisan, requiring candidates to campaign actively and to be clear about their campaign issues, “rather than relying on party labels to guide their voting.”

Nonpartisan school board elections also require voters to actively study candidates’ positions on the issues and also avoid worthy candidates from being victims of straight-ticket voting, which many said played a major role in the recent election. Some observers also said straight-ticket votes hurt Sandra Mikush, who campaigned in 2006 as an independent with nonpartisan school boards as a major campaign issue.

Mikush lost her school board bid by fewer than 7,000 votes, despite an endorsement from the Journal, who wrote “ she ought to have raised awareness of the need for officials here to consider making the school board nonpartisan.”

Elizabeth Motsinger, a Democratic WSFCS school board member, said, “The idea of nonpartisanship in school boards is better than partisanship. Issues addressing school boards are not partisan issues.“

Motsinger also expressed concern about the type of candidate partisan elections attract.

“We might be attracting some different people who would want to run for school board,” Motsinger said. “We might get people whose primary interest is education, but not particularly politics. People use school boards as a political steppingstone, and I don’t think school boards should be seen as political steppingstones. It should be what is in the best interests of our children.”

The reality of politics

On the other side of the issue, those in favor of partisan school boards think nonpartisan boards do voters a disservice, considering the fact that political parties are an important part of the nation’s system of government.

“Candidates become members of political parties because the political party represents the essential views of the candidate toward government,” WSFCS board member Buddy Collins wrote in an e-mail message. “Education is a political issue in which Democrats and Republicans differ greatly. I think voters are better served when they can vote for a candidate who shares their basic core values and identification.”

In a phone interview, WSFCS Superintendent Don Martin echoed Collins’ sentiment.

“Politics are politics. School board members that are nonpartisan are probably registered in some party or another,” Martin said. “I think it’s a theoretical construct that exempts school board members from the connotation that politics are dirty. The point is they’re in politics. Politics is a way of people representing other people to make decisions and they have to make compromises in order to get majorities to move forward. The political process does that.”

Still, Martin does not endorse one system over the other. In Martin’s 28 years as a professional educator, he has spent 14 years working with nonpartisan boards and 14 years working with WSFCS’ partisan board. He doesn’t see a difference in effectiveness.

“I think people who are willing to run for a school board are interested in kids and care about them and have a vested interest anywhere along the line,” he said.

One can argue that, by any standards, the WSFCS partisan board has functioned effectively. WSFCS has a good relationship with the school board. Working together, the system has redistricted and introduced equity and magnet schools. Voters have passed three school bonds during its tenure, the latest a $250 million bond approved by 65 percent of voters. WSFCS has a reputation for building quality schools on time, while its neighbors to the east, Guilford County Schools, failed to finish projects from a 2003 bond and had to carry them over to another $412 million bond, which voters approved in May.

The party makeup of county boards of commissioners also plays a role, Martin said, and it certainly hasn’t hurt matters any that Forsyth County’s commission has been ruled by Republicans for several years now.

“The relationship to the county commissioners is real important,” Martin said. “That alliance has been more positive than it’s been negative.”

Sam Hieb is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.