We think the time may have come to eliminate the non-partisan charade of the Alamance-Burlington school board and move toward having partisan elections.
Historically, across the state, most school board races had traditionally been non-partisan, largely based on the increasingly questionable assumption that it would be easier to obtain consensus and work in a bipartisan or non-partisan setting.
But non-partisan school board elections do not prevent politics or serious philosophical differences from rearing its head in setting school system policies – or, more frequently, simply deferring to the ostensibly “professional” educrats. Instead, non-partisan boards merely camouflage who’s really supporting what policies.
At many ABSS meetings for instance, it is possible to sit for hours without hearing any mention of academic achievement. It’s also not unusual that not a single board member asks any substantive questions about even fundamental policy changes or any other dimension of the administration’s agenda or recommendations. In practice, this has meant a continuation of mediocrity in the ABSS school system.
Another problem is that there is typically a large falloff in voting participation in non-partisan races, compared to partisan ones.
One study of 36 North Carolina counties (with 16 partisan and 20 non-partisan school boards) found many more voters in non-partisan races simply skipped voting on the race, compared to in partisan cases.
So, all in all, it’s not too surprising that over the past decade, more and more North Carolina counties have moved toward having partisan elections for school board members. Currently, in almost half of all school systems, 53 out of 116, North Carolina school boards are elected on a partisan basis.
In fact, during this week’s elections, Alexander County citizens decided through a referendum to make their board of education the 54th such partisan board.
Six of the 14 largest school systems in the state (ABSS is the 14th) – including Guilford, Forsyth, and New Hanover – have partisan school board elections.
We’re not sure we can point to many specific decisions on the school board that are clearly influenced by partisan decisions, but that’s largely because the ABSS board members have a very muddled commitment to any sort of principled philosophy.
For instance, while all three board members elected in 2022 (Dan Ingle, Chuck Marsh, and Charles Parker) were registered as Republicans and endorsed by the county’s Republican Party (probably the reason each won), two of the three (Ingle and Marsh) have subsequently disavowed their party affiliation and changed their party registration to unaffiliated.
Meanwhile, board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves’ commitment to conservative Republican principles was so inconsequential, in their view, that the local Republican Party Executive Committee decided (we’ve heard by a vote of 28-7) prior to this year’s election not to endorse her, even though she’s a registered Republican.
The party had four spots eligible for endorsement, since there were four spots on the ballot, but they decided to endorse only three candidates.
Only one of those, Avery Wagoner, won this week.
Meanwhile, both candidates endorsed by the Alamance Democratic Party – Seneca Rogers, who was appointed to the board last year, and Tameka Harvey – won four-year terms.
In essence, Democrats, even more than Republicans, boosted their impact in the voting booth by “double-shotting” for their two preferred candidates, improving the odds that both were, in fact, elected.
Ellington-Graves led the voting, even though she did not have her party’s endorsement. Meanwhile, school board vice chairman Donna Davis Westbrooks, who was a Democrat when elected in 2020 but changed to unaffiliated since then, was defeated, running seventh out of eight candidates on the ballot.
But instead of having only a few people with insider knowledge about who’s of which political persuasion, as partisans hand out “slate cards” at polling sites telling their fellow partisans how to vote (for a host of partisan and non-partisan offices), it seems to us much better for all voters to have access to the information by bringing partisan affiliations out into the open and including that information on the ballot.
One thing is clear to us: the current system isn’t working very well, and hasn’t been working well.
The collective caliber of ABSS school boards hasn’t been very strong for several decades. There’s been no priority on academic excellence. Instead, grades and performance have flat-lined, and school facilities have not been kept up to date. (See multi-million mold example of 2023 as the most recent, notable, and hugely expensive example.)
School board members simply aren’t very engaged in actually overseeing the school system they’re ostensibly charged to govern.
Would anything be better with an overtly partisan caste?
It’s hard to imagine it being much worse.
We think it may be worth a try.
We would encourage Alamance County commissioners to begin discussions with the county’s legislative delegation to consider having a “local bill” to convert future school board elections into partisan elections.
Another option would be the one employed in Alexander County: a referendum to allow the people to decide whether they prefer partisan school board elections.
We believe the people of Alamance County deserve more accountability from their school board members, and partisan elections may be just the solution to obtain that outcome.
