School trustees have eye on elections
The Coeur d’Alene School District Board of Trustees is worried proposed legislation could make kids’ education a partisan issue by moving school board trustee elections to the same time as general elections.
The board will have a second discussion on a resolution addressing the issue at its meeting Monday.
At the board’s July 10 meeting, Vice-Chair Tom Hearn presented two resolutions for discussion before sending them to the Idaho School Board Association. The statewide board may consider them during its convention in November in Coeur d’Alene. The first proposed school board trustee elections move to November of odd-numbered years, directly opposing Sen. Mary Souza’s legislation proposing they move to even-numbered years, aligning them with partisan general elections.
“The reality is that the Legislature, for the last three or four years, through the efforts of Sen. Souza and Sen. [Jim] Rice, have wanted to change the law in respect to school board elections, and the ISBA has opposed their efforts in the past and they have been successful,” Hearn said. “After discussing with the executive board, we decided to come up with our own solution instead of being reactive.”
The ISBA and the school board opposed similar legislation in the past because they believed moving school board elections to the same date as partisan general elections would politicize school boards. Some trustees said they thought Souza, Rice and other senators supporting the bill had political motivations behind moving the elections.
“If people are concerned about participation in elections, then they wouldn’t be pushing closed primaries and deciding races in May when hardly anyone votes,” said Casey Morrisroe, chair of the Cd’A school board. “But that’s basically — in Idaho where we have a one-party Republican system — that’s basically the way it works.”
Souza said she plans to reintroduce school board election legislation for the third time when the Senate reconvenes next January. Her most recent bill made it out of the Education Committee and onto the Senate floor, its greatest progress since it was first proposed.
She and Rice worked together on the most recent bill, and Souza said she plans to work with Rice this time around as well. After legislative contacts told Hearn about Souza’s plan, he decided to seek a compromise. Souza and Rice both said their only goal is to get more people to participate in school board elections. Rice noted citizens residing in rural areas don’t venture into town for odd-numbered year elections, so they’d miss out.
“We need to re-establish schools as the heart of our community,” Rice said. “There is nothing less partisan than every Idahoan’s love for our children.”
He and Souza are concerned citizens forget about school board elections, which may help explain why voter turnout for school board elections in Kootenai County dropped from 8 percent in 2015 to 5.7 percent in 2017, the Kootenai County Elections Office reported.
Hearn and the board, however, sense a partisan effort to get people who support incumbent legislators to vote for trustees, indirectly guaranteeing the trustee is in the same political boat as the legislators. In Kootenai County, every legislator is a Republican.
“If they are in odd-numbered years in November, they’ll be the same as city council elections and some other non-partisan elections,” Hearn said. “Our belief is that if the intent of the legislators is truly to increase participation, but not just make it a partisan issue... then we thought a good compromise would be to have elections in November of odd-numbered years.”
Hearn said he and the ISBA have reached out to Souza to work with her on the legislation, but have yet to hear back. Souza said she plans to work with them and she already contacted ISBA. She stressed this “couldn’t possibly be partisan since increasing voter turnout” gets both sides of the aisle involved.