Capital Article
Yeager, Amanda, Lawmakers pitch three visions for picking Anne Arundel school board, January 12, 2017.
Snider Comment
Glad to see that after a half dozen years of resisting the change the legislature is finally moving from legislative to councilmanic districts in its reform proposals. Admittedly, a minor change. But it signals they’re paying attention, as the old system violated the core democratic principle of equal representation, which includes equal sized districts for candidate recruitment (one legislative district is much smaller than the other four).
The biggest omission–and it’s a huge one–concerns how to fix the nomination process and the invisible primary for the elected school board members. School board elections in giant school districts like ours (we’re in the top 1% by size) are notoriously corrupt. Our elected officials don’t want to tackle this problem because all the proposed solutions are highly controversial. But the public and our children will eventually pay a big price for their burying their heads in the sands. Sure, the existing system is awful (as documented on eLighthouse.info). But merely improving on the status quo isn’t trying hard enough.