PC Council: Let voters make call

There are persuasive arguments for either an elected or an appointed board of education. Either kind can be, and both have been, successful forms of public education policymaking. The former puts the decision directly in the hands of the public; the latter is intended to take politics, as much as possible, out of the process.

In recent years, Phenix City seems to have seen the worst of both worlds, due to a hybrid system that makes the school board accountable not to the voters, but to a city council elected by the voters. The result is a board whose selection process is inherently political, but which is still largely insulated from accountability to the public.

Examples of public trust problems in school board business aren’t hard to cite. The board voted in 2013 to buy out the contract of former Superintendent Larry DiChiara for still-undisclosed reasons. Including legal fees, DiChiara cost almost $600,000 in school system money not to work for the school system.

His successor, Randy Wilkes — the incumbent and by all indicators respected and effective superintendent — was hired after a closed session, with no public interview or discussion (Two other candidate were interviewed publicly; two members of the board had not even met Wilkes.) And just two weeks ago, Phenix City Council voted against the reappointment of the board president and vice president for reasons that were nebulous at best.

Kudos to that same council for taking a unanimous vote Tuesday for public accountability — one way or another.

Councilors decided in a 5-0 vote to adopt a resolution asking the local legislative delegation to introduce a local referendum on an elected school board. District 80 state Rep. Chris Blackshear — who is a former council member and said he personally opposes an elected board — will introduce the measure, probably in the 2017 session due to the usual 11th-hour scramble in the current one. “There is no time to introduce this and have anything adopted this session,” Blackshear said.

That process, of course, underscores an archaic system of centralized state control in which a purely local decision has to be approved in Montgomery. Unless a constitutional issue is involved, local government should be a strictly local matter. The problem in Alabama is that under the cumbersome 1901 state constitution, virtually everything is, by definition, a constitutional issue.

There’s nothing Phenix City can do about that. And it might be that even with the turmoil and controversy over board actions in recent years, voters will opt for the status quo, as they did in 2003. But council’s decision to put the matter back before the public is well timed, perhaps even overdue.

Maybe council members are ready to get out of the school board business anyway. It would be hard to blame them.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 4:08 PM with the headline "PC Council: Let voters make call."