Nine Reasons for Partisan School Board Elections in Utah

BACKGROUND - Federal judge Clark Waddoups ruled in 2014 that our current method of selecting candidates for the Utah Board of Education is unconstitutional. So, this year our House and Senate need to establish a better method. Although we have tried various methods of naming our state board of education, Utah has never tried electing school board members by the same trusted method we use to elect our governor, legislators, county commissioners and sheriffs. This method allows each neighborhood in the state to elect delegates to intensively evaluate each candidate and vote, in their party conventions, to select the best nominee for their party. These highly qualified and popular candidates then run in the general election. 

REASON 1- Our school boards do not reflect the ideology of our people. In one of the most politically conservative states in the country, our state and local school boards are moderate to liberal. If you doubt this, just try to find one board which has passed a resolution opposing Utah’s adoption of national common core English language and math standards. Or, find one board which does not advocate raising state taxes to fund education at a higher level.

Current school boards in Utah are dominated by Democrat-leaning members. I see that from the inside as a recent county school board member. The legislative voting report card of the Utah School Boards Association (USBA) plainly shows that Democrats support USBA’s preferred bills much more than conservative Republicans do. That will not happen when school board candidates are chosen by our party delegates.

This bill will give our public education system the benefit of a republic. That is the process by which citizens choose well qualified and well informed representatives to make important decisions for them. It is a republican process to elect our most trusted neighbors in party caucuses to vet our candidates in their conventions. 

Partisan elections will empower locally elected neighborhood delegates to choose school board candidates with the same values as the candidates they choose for other offices.  

REASON 2 – Utah voters are less informed about school board candidates and issues than about any other race, except, possibly, judicial retention and mosquito abatement districts. This is in spite of the fact that most people consider public education to be among the highest priorities for government attention. Just think how many times you have stood at the voting machine and said to yourself, as you near the end of the ballot, ”School Board? I have no idea who these people are or what they stand for!” 

Yet school districts control the spending of four times the tax money of county governments. The state board of education oversees 28% of state spending in addition to overseeing all school districts’ spending. That is a lot of control of government resources with very limited electoral oversight.

Thousands of well-informed locally elected delegates returning home from their nominating conventions will do a lot to inform their neighbors about school board candidates and issues while selecting better candidates for the ballot. Also party funds given to help the campaigns of party candidates will do a lot to better inform the voters at large about the important issues facing school board members.

REASON 3 – Advocates of non-partisan school board elections argue that we need to keep politics out of the schools.  Yet our state and local school board elections are already fraught with politically charged rhetoric. Only the party labels are missing. Current education insiders take advantage of their political organization and use our school infrastructure to lobby teachers, students and parents. However, those with different opinions have not even so much as a party organization to help them get their message out to voters. 

Some may worry that partisan elections will result in political indoctrination of our children in school. I would be naive to believe that would never happen, because it happens now with our current one-party system. Do you wonder why our children celebrate earth day and multi-culturalism while graduating with the belief that socialism is good, homosexual marriage is fine and big government can solve all our problems if we just give it enough money? I’ll tell you why. They are already being politically indoctrinated, but not with the principles of their parents. At least partisan school board elections will encourage the teaching of the principles of the majority. 

Politics (ideologies) are already present in our school board elections. Partisan elections will only level the playing field and give equal opportunity to competing voices. 

REASON 4 - Ever since George Washington advised Americans to avoid political parties, we have instinctively felt political parties are harmful. And why not? Of course we always fear and dislike the opposing parties. We are even disappointed with the positions of some in our own party.  On the surface we may think we do not like political parties, but deeper consideration reveals that our political system benefits from party organization and the information parties make available to voters. Government policy and candidate qualifications are highly complex matters which are difficult for typical voters to decide on. The platforms of principles which parties adopt help voters more easily decide which candidates they will support. 

Most legislators have heard requests from constituents for help correcting a problem which is really the responsibility of a local school board or even the state board. They surely have asked themselves why citizens come to them instead of addressing the more appropriate elected official? I think you’ll agree it is because elected school board members are not as well-known as legislators. But they should be and could be. If they were elected by the same robust process as legislators they would be as well-known and would be held as accountable as legislators.

Just as partisan elections produce well-screened, qualified and popular legislators, governors, sheriffs etc. who are held accountable to voters, so also would they produce similar board of education members. 

PARTISAN is not a four-letter word.

REASON 5 - For decades the Utah legislature and the state board of education have been at loggerheads over how to approach public education. The state board has blamed the legislature for micromanaging education and failing to adequately fund education. On the other hand the legislature has accused the state board of not implementing the real intent of some education legislation. This finger pointing and lack of trust has certainly obstructed the improvement Utah might otherwise have made in education. 

The best way to resolve this problem is to make the state board of education accountable to the same party delegates as the legislature is. When both are held to the same standard, they will more likely pursue the same goals and work together in synergy to provide outstanding public education.

REASON  6 – Some will argue that it is dangerous to let party delegates choose school board candidates in convention. This because public education establishment powers (teachers union, PTA and administrators) will become energized to influence caucus outcomes and begin also to influence current partisan elections like legislators and state executives. 

This cannot rationally happen. The forces of the education establishment represent less than 1% of the electorate. They have been working their hearts out for years attempting to influence our caucuses. They cannot possibly get more involved. They do not have more money to fund such an effort. The more active they try to become, the more clearly they reveal themselves for the progressives they are. The caucus attenders of Utah will not support more progressive delegates. 

This argument is a red herring.

REASON 7 – Some may argue that school districts are small enough that party involvement is unnecessary for candidates to get their message out to voters. I’ll grant that local school board elections may work as non-partisan elections in very small districts just as in smaller municipalities. But state school board districts are twice as large as state senate districts and many local school board districts are larger than House districts. There, more than ever, we need delegates to dig into candidate qualifications and principles for us so we have the best possible candidates to choose from in the general election.

Other states, such as Indiana, have conducted partisan local school board elections for decades. Their education systems are not corrupted or degraded by such elections even in the smallest school districts.

REASON 8 – It is extremely expensive to conduct a direct primary election campaign in a large voting district. State school board districts represent some 200,000 Utahns. In such large districts, communicating anything but a candidate name to that many voters is prohibitively costly to all but the wealthy elite. We should not adopt direct primary elections because voters should have the opportunity to elect any well-qualified candidate they support, not only members of the wealthy aristocracy or those whom they financially support.  Partisan elections are either far less expensive or they provide a broader base of financial support to candidates.

REASON 9 - Public schools always tell us that parental involvement in the education of children is essential to their success. I believe this is true. So consider the impact on parental involvement in education decision making when the following happen with partisan school board elections at state and local levels:

     - Every two years more than 8,000 state and county delegates from every corner of Utah take their responsibility seriously and carefully research the qualifications and principles of local and state school board candidates.

     - Delegates then gather in conventions and share ideas with each other about public education policies and results.

     - Then delegates return home where they discuss with their neighbors and family members what they learned and what they think about candidates and education issues.

     - Over a ten-year period, with many citizens taking their turn serving as party delegates, many more Utahns will have experience intensively vetting school board candidates.

This is a formula for substantially more informed voting in school board elections as well as more parental involvement in local schools.

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Why is my voice worth listening to? I just finished a four-year term as a member of the Davis School Board. 2015 will be my sixth legislative session serving as a full-time unpaid volunteer citizen lobbyist. I am also finishing my fourth year as an elected member of the Republican State Central Committee. I teach “The History of the Philosophy of Education” at George Wythe University in Salt Lake City. And finally, because I love our constitutional republic, I served over 21 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1997.

A Better Way to Choose State School Board Candidates

     Many Utahans pay little attention to issues of their state school board. After all, there are only 15 members of the board. They only come up for election every 4 years. They cannot directly levy taxes.  And besides that, it’s hard to know how they vote and what the issues are, because the press hardly covers their meetings. And yet nearly everyone in Utah believes that education of our children is the most important issue state government has to deal with.

     Why would we as citizens be so uninformed and uninterested about electing those who directly control the issue we see as most important?  We are not simply apathetic citizens. We pay considerable attention to the election of our governor, state representatives and state senators. The press actively reports issues, bills and political maneuvering when the Utah legislature is in session.

     Is it possible that our method of electing state school board members is so different from the way we elect governors and our state legislators that we don’t get the same degree of accountability?

     Here is the difference between the two current methods of election: 

           State school board candidates currently submit an application to a committee appointed by the governor. That committee then chooses and recommends to the governor three candidates for each district which is due for election. The governor then chooses two of those three candidates to appear on the general election ballot. 

     Candidates seeking the office of governor and legislator file their candidacy for nomination by their party or as an independent candidate. 

     The big difference is the involvement of the governor or neighborhood delegates in choosing their candidates for each office. 

Benefits of Political Parties in a Republic

     By nature political parties strive to win the support of citizens for their positions by informing them of the party’s principles and positions on issues and organizing to help their preferred candidates win election. So, parties provide valuable information to voters as well as an organization to help citizens be involved in the political process. 

     In Utah, delegates selected by their neighbors also provide the very valuable service of evaluating candidates and selecting the best in their party conventions to move forward to the general election. This evaluation service is performed by citizens elected by their neighbors in biannual neighborhood caucus meetings throughout the state. These elected citizens are known as delegates and are the best known and most trusted members of their communities. It is because of their excellent vetting that Utah has such outstanding elected officials and is known as one of the best managed states in the Union.

Responsibility for Education: Divided between Legislature and Board of Education

     Our Utah State Constitution forms three departments of state government: Executive, legislative, and judicial. It divides responsibility for our public schools between the legislative department, which establishes and maintains the public education system, and a state board of education, which is not assigned to one of the three departments and controls and supervises the system.

     Because legislators are elected in a very different manner than state board of education members, our system experiences a fundamental conflict in values and priorities between the two bodies.  My personal experience over years attending legislative sessions and state school board meetings has confirmed stark philosophical differences between the two bodies. This conflict has significantly hindered the implementation of a unified vision for the education of Utah’s children.

The Solution

     I am convinced that if we elected our state school board members by the same method as other state officials, we would see a much more effective education system.  We citizens will also become better informed because our political parties and media will more actively inform us about education issues.

     Fortunately in this 2014 state legislative session Representative Brian Greene (R-Pleasant Grove) is sponsoring House Bill 228 (HB228) to require candidates for state board of education to be elected by the same mechanism as the governor and legislature. His bill would also require them to meet the same campaign finance reporting requirements.

HB228 will align the process for electing those who have a role in public education, make the selection process for state school board members more open and transparent and raise the profile of members of the state board of education.

     Please contact your state senator and member of the House of Representatives to encourage them to support the passage of HB228 this year.

Last Minute Early Morning Committee Meeting Rushes Low Priorities

Did you ever wonder how last minute wheeling and dealing happens at the legislature? Here is a summary of some that I observed today.

Freshman Senator, Aaron Osmond, chairs the powerful Senate Education Committee this year. He got permission to hold one last committee meeting four days before the end of the session so two of his bills and two sponsored by others could get the stamp of approval of a last minute committee hearing. This despite the fact that we all know that rush decisions with little discussion are often poor decisions. Senator Osmond assured me before the meeting started that there had been lots of behind the scenes discussion before these bills were brought to this public committee meeting.

Sen. Osmond's SB216 would require the State Board of Education to spend $450,000 of Education Fund money to contract for online tools, hardware, software, training resources, and incident management processes to provide greater security for secondary schools. Former Utah First Lady, Jackie Leavitt, testified in favor of the bill.

I argued in committee that districts could better use that money to improve security in the way that is best for their district. I also said that last minute bills targeted at a specific service provided by a specific vendor were not in our best interest.

SB217, also sponsored by Sen. Osmond, would spend an as yet unknown amount of money for a group of BYU professors and secondary school math teachers to quickly create on-line math textbooks to be used to teach math that meets the new Utah Core math standards. It would create textbook information which would belong to the state and would be far less expensive than paper textbooks currently available.

Although I did not testify against the bill I am still concerned about a last minute vendor bill passing in an early morning special committee meeting.

Senator Jerry Stevenson, representing Davis County, sponsored SB248. It would spend $6 million of state economic development funds over 3 years to provide grants to 10 schools. An education technology vendor would then provide these schools with an integrated school-wide technology plan. This plan would include a mobile learning device for each student, computers for classrooms, and a wireless network with internet filtering.

I testified that educators would be happy to receive $6 million from other than an education fund, but that districts like Davis already have schools where every student has a netbook as their textbook. Implementing these things locally is a better way to innovate than top-down direction.

Finally, I was troubled that Sen. Niederhauser brought his bill, SB174, to the Education Committee at this late date when this committee has no background knowledge of land use issues. His bill would allow subdivision of large agricultural land parcels without producing a plat map.

I told the committee that this kind of last minute work did not lend itself to good decision making.

At the end of the day, this wheeling and dealing ended with all four bills passing the committee unanimously.

SB67 (Sen. Adams) Teacher Evaluations and Merit Pay

Utah's public school teachers who work in school districts receive pay increases according to a pay scale which recognizes the college degree they have earned and the number of years they have worked for their school district. These pay scales are referred to as “Steps and Lanes”. We all believe those two measures should make teachers better. But, wouldn't it be better to actually evaluate how well they teach and pay more to those teachers who excel in their teaching evaluation?

Senator Adams (R) has proposed a bill which, over the next 8 years, would gradually eliminate steps and lanes and replace them with locally designed pay scales which reward teachers for better annual performance evaluations.

One of the outstanding features of this bill reduces steps and lanes while allowing local school districts and charter schools to establish their own pay scales. It also lets local districts and charter schools establish the mix of which types of evaluation measures they will use. It calls for 60% of the evaluation to be based on student's growth in learning. The remaining 40% can be made up some combination of the principal's evaluation, parents evaluation, students evaluation and peer evaluation.

Beginning in the 2014-2015 school year, teachers will be evaluated annually as performing in one of four performance levels. No teacher may receive any kind of salary increase if he/she is rated in the lower half of the performance levels. Teachers in the higher performance categories may receive higher pay. The bill also allows salary supplements to teachers assigned to difficult schools, critically short teaching areas, or who have additional academic responsibilities.

The bill would require publication of a grade for each school and the ratings of the teachers in that school. It would also allow any principal to reject the transfer of any employee to his/her school.

Thank you, Senator Adams, for this rare and wonderful bill which provides broad-based performance evaluation and a transition to real pay for performance.

As of this writing the bill had passed the Senate Education Committee and was awaiting debate and a vote on the floor of the Senate.

Democracy at theUtah State Capitol

In early February 2012 many of our state legislators participated in a very common and typical event in the rotunda of the state capitol building which I consider to be an inappropriate political activity .

The Community Action Partnership of Utah, America's Poverty Fighting Network, sponsored a box luncheon for their member organizations with the state legislators.  

The event was part of what they called " Democracy Day". This may sound quite innocent until you consider that our founding fathers strongly opposed the form of government known as "democracy".  They much preferred the form of government which our constitution provides, a "republic". Consider these eight quotations from our founders:

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. 

        James Madison

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. 

        John Adams

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty. 

       Fisher Ames, Author of the House Language for the First Amendment

We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate . . . as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism. . . . Democracy! savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise to thy level of folly and guilt. 

       Gouverneur Morris, Signer and Penman of the Constitution

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived. 

       John Quincy Adams

A simple democracy . . . is one of the greatest of evils. 

       Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration

In democracy . . . there are commonly tumults and disorders. . . . Therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth. 

       Noah Webster

Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state, it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage. 

       John Witherspoon, Signer of the Declaration

In addition, it seems wrong that a charitable organization spend its precious funds to buy lunch at an expensive venue for legislators and for their non-poverty stricken administrators. It seems doubly inappropriate that most of the funds these organizations have at their disposal come from federal and state taxpayers and were intended for the relief of the poor.

 I do not approve of my tax dollars being spent by government-sponsored non-profit organizations to attract legislators to convince them to appropriate more of my tax dollars for further misuse by the non-profits. 

May I suggest that our legislators should be willing to mingle and visit with citizens and groups who come to the capitol during the legislative session without the enticement of a free lunch or dinner paid for by monied special interests. Normal average citizens cannot afford to buy lunch for legislators in the capitol rotunda and should not have to do so in order to get a few minutes of their attention.
 

HB213 School Community Council Member Qualifications

Each public school in Utah elects a School Community Council (SCC). Among other things the SCC decides how the school will spend its share of funding provided by the School Lands Trust Fund. For most schools this runs from several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. The SCC is made up of two types of members, parents and school employees. It was required that parents outnumber school employee members.

When first established, SCCs were often dominated by school district employees because school employees could be elected as school employee members or as parent members. In 2011 the legislature restricted district employees from being elected as parent members of the SCC in the district where they work. That change troubled school employees because they usually could not serve on the SCC of the school where their own children attended.

HB213 Would now revise the law again so that school employees could serve as parent members on the SCC where their child attends as long as that is not also the school that the parent works at. In order to prevent dominance of the SCC by school employees, HB213 also requires that parent members outnumber employee members by at least 2.

Some schools seem to have trouble recruiting enough parents to serve on the SCC. Because parents want their childrens' schools to be excellent, they should, as good and involved citizens, take their turn serving on their local School Community Council.

HJR8 Article V Amendments Convention

Our state legislature is considering a very dangerous resolution this session. It would call upon the U.S. Congress to “call a convention for proposing amendments” to the constitution of the United States. The amendment which HJR8 requests to be considered would require approval of a majority of states in order to increase the debt of the federal government. Pres. Ronald Regan's friend, Phyllis Schlafly, has adamantly opposed this idea for decades. The Utah Eagle Forum has consistently fought against this idea.

Why? The history of the creation of our U.S. Constitution provides a stark warning against any call for a convention to amend the constitution. A convention was called only to amend the Articles of Confederation. That convention exceeded its mandate and produced an entirely new constitution. That constitution was ratified by the states and became our current constitution.

If the states today were to call for a convention to amend the constitution, the convention would be organized by the current U.S. Congress and be conducted by the rules established by the current U.S. Congress. I do not yet trust our U.S. Senate and House to be as wise as our founders and retain the guarantees of our freedom and the protections of our rights which we currently have.

Proponents of this bill will argue that we are safe from a runaway convention because three fourths of the states must ratify any amendments the convention proposes. I argue that one must only consider the broad coverage and persuasiveness of the liberal main stream media to see how many states could be deceived into ratifying amendments which would damage our constitution with socialist ideas.

Another mistaken argument supporters cite is, “The constitution is divinely inspired and it provides this method of amending the constitution. Therefore we must use this provision.” I contend that God expects us to use the provisions from the divinely inspired constitution at the times and in the ways which are best. He does not dictate that we must gamble with the future of our constitution.

The amendment which this convention would consider, is also faulty. It would require a majority of states to approve any increase in the national debt. But states are already so dependent on federal funding of their state programs that most states would not commit fiscal suicide by refusing to approve an increase in the national debt and thus have their federal funding cut.

Unfortunately, there are a number of good (even conservative) members of the Utah legislature who believe this VERY risky convention is a good idea to rescue our republic and our fiscal stability. The bill was defeated in the last legislative session, but it is back with many new legislators now considering voting in favor of it. Many states have already passed this resolution.Utah must not be the state to put us over the top to call a new constitutional convention.

If you are willing to join in the fight against this constitutional convention, please contact as many legislators (especially the newer ones) as you can to ask them to vote against HJR 8.