A new group of parents, joining the fray over public school reassignment in Wake County, is asking members of the General Assembly to support legislation that would make Board of Education members elected on a countywide basis.
The Wake County School Board is divided into nine districts, with no at large seats. But if Cary resident Joe Ciulla gets his way, that soon will change.
Ciulla recently launched the nonpartisan group TakeOurSchoolsBack.org, joining a growing number of parents who have mobilized in opposition to inconvenient reassignments and busing schedules. Ciulla is using the Web site and an online petition to fight for an overhaul of the electoral process for the school board.
“We have one chance to educate our children, and that’s a core value of being a parent,” said Ciulla, a father of two students who have faced multiple reassignments over the last decade. “I struggle mightily with a school board that absolutely controls the fate of my children as they move through the school system.”
The new group backs legislation introduced last session in both chambers of the legislature that would convert all school board seats from district-based to at-large elections. The measures would also switch the election day for school board from odd- to even-numbered years.
That would give parents a greater voice in electing the leaders who determine the course of education in the county, said Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, sponsor of the House version of the bill.
“Parents want stability for their children, stability for their families,” Dollar said. “They want to have some reasonable notion of where their children are going to school, and not be under the sword of Damocles every year having to move and disrupt their children’s education process, having to learn new schools and make new friends.”
The legislation was buried in committee and never came up for a vote, but Dollar pledged to reintroduce the bill again, possibly in the upcoming short session.
That could prove problematic, he said, since traditionally local bills are not put forward in the short session without the agreement of the full Wake County delegation.
Not everyone sees a need to revamp the electoral process, and some are concerned that such a change would violate voting rights.
“My personal perspective as a board member is that I believe being elected by districts is very important for the greater representation of all the citizens in Wake County,” said Patti Head, a school board member representing the northwestern part of the county.
“I am open to looking at some of the possibilities of re-examining whether we would do a 7-to-2 district-based versus at-large split, or something similar, as long as it was tied to taxing authority,” she said.
Head served two years as chairwoman of the board before the current chairwoman, Rosa Gill, took over in 2007.
Another school board member, Eleanor Goettee, representing western Wake County, doesn’t object to reviewing the issue, even though she supports the current structure.
“I would say I do not support all at-large seats for the board for this particular reason: I think it’s important that somebody on the board be an advocate for a particular part of the system,” Goettee said. “Since the system is so large, there could be a disproportionate vote from a certain part of the county.”
At-large elections would also raise costs since candidates would have to campaign countywide, opening up “a whole new realm of special-interest groups and having to raise new bucks,” she said.
The school board is not unanimous in its opposition. On March 4, Ron Margiotta, a member representing southwestern Wake, proposed a motion to include in the school board’s 2008 legislative agenda a request to shift all school board elections to at-large. The motion failed by a vote of 6- 1, with Margiotta casting the lone vote in favor.
“It’s only logical,” Margiotta said of the change to countywide elections. “We’re a big monster school district. I would much prefer to see the entire school district broken up into smaller districts, but that would take an act of God, so we’ll have to accept this.”
Margiotta also supports the idea of changing school board elections to even-numbered years, which would put contests on the same ballot as higher-profile races.
“The more people we can get to turn out, the more representative the school board will be,” he said.
The drive for at-large elections is chiefly driven by frustration among parents over their children suffering long bus rides, forced reassignments, and mandatory conversions to year-round calendars. The flames of protest were further stoked when the school board in early February approved a new batch of reassignments for the coming school year.
Hundreds of parents turned out for three public hearings in January to protest the reassignment schedule. Parents have joined forces to create advocacy groups such as Wake CARES, which filed a lawsuit against the school district last year.
Even though members of Wake County’s legislative delegation differ on the proposed shift to at-large elections, elected officials in towns surrounding Raleigh — such as Garner, Holly Springs, Apex, Cary, and Wake Forest — have expressed support for the idea.
Still, some are concerned that at-large races and a revision of the elections schedule could have negative implications, such as violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Ciulla called the argument that countywide elections would dilute minority votes a smokescreen. “The people I discuss this issue with don’t have an opinion from a named attorney saying that this conclusively violates the Voting Rights Act,” he said. “People will say they are concerned it will violate the act, but they won’t come out and say it does.”
Ciulla plans to press on with his petition, which had about 200 signatures as of early March, and lobbying state lawmakers on the importance of at-large elections.
“Many folks for years have protested against the board, but the fundamental answer is to fix the electoral process,” he said. “I want to reach out, generate signatures, and in the end convince our Wake delegation in the General Assembly that the majority of parents want this for our children.”
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.
