NJ elections provide more reason to eliminate suburban school boards

Today I'm reading a story on NJ Spotlight that approximately 80 percent of New Jersey school district budgets were approved by voters throughout the state. Last year 59 percent of them were rejected. Part of the reason for the passage of so many budgets was that increases fell below a two percent cap supported by Governor Christie and passed by the state legislature last year.

With a cap in place, and school administrators diligently working within it to develop a budget, there was little reason for people to vote in school board elections. And that is precisely what happened. Turnout was higher than 20 percent in only one of New Jersey's 21 counties.

There has been talk of ways to get out the vote for school board elections, such as moving them to November, when voters vote in other races . However, unlike races for state or local office, school board elections are non-partisan. Mixing partisan and non-partisan races together could prove confusing--imagine designing the ballot and the display for the voting machine--and this would not necessarily mean that more people would take notice of their school board race.

But after reading about this week's voting, I still go back to a core belief: suburban communities should get rid of school boards. Let parents participate in the governance of the schools their children attend and designate a county or local government to make the non-academic business decisions.

School board members are ill-equipped to manage multi-million dollar budgets and negotiate expensive labor contracts. They are even less capable of making education decisions--for example, special education placements--on behalf of families. Parents could better resolve these issues by working with the principal and teachers in their neighborhood school. This is what they would do if they sent their children to a private or parochial school.

Aside from their capabilities, suburban school boards are so heavily regulated by the state board of education that they have little latitude to make decisions about budgets and curriculum. The two percent cap is state law. So are requirements on the numbers of days schools must be open to receive state aid. The academic programs are state mandates and so are high-stakes tests. While a school board provides a forum to complain about state-mandated policies, its members cannot vote to ignore them.

New Jersey is unique among the fifty states because it has more school districts than local governments, and they act as their own governments, too. This creates more confusion without necessarily enhancing local control. If most, if not all, of these boards went away, it is doubtful they would be missed.