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Friday the Wake Forest commissioners
said they wanted to think over whether
to support a move to have voters across
the county vote for each member of the
Wake County Board of Education instead
of the current system of district
voting.
“The county commissioners
want it, the school board doesn’t,”
Mayor Vivian Jones said.
Jones raised the issue,
saying she had been approached “by some
folks about being the lead group to
present legislation to make the school
board a county-wide election.” Whether
or not Wake Forest decides to take the
lead and then contact other towns asking
them to join, Jones said, “It is going
to the legislature.”
The rationale people urging
the change have is to make the school
board members more accountable to all
the people. “An excuse the [school]
board uses is that they don’t have to
listen to other people in other parts of
the county because you don’t vote for
me.”
“Why is it a good idea to do
it for the school board and a bad idea
for the state legislature?” Commissioner
Frank Drake asked, noting that Wake
County has five state House districts
with a representative elected just from
the district.
“They think they will get
better representation from them if
everyone votes for them,” Jones said.
Town Manager Mark Williams
said the effort is to make the school
board members “start thinking more
county-wide.” He noted one of the
reasons changing to district voting in
Wake Forest failed a few years back was
because people wanted to know they could
approach five people. “They wanted to
have access to everyone on the board.”
Commissioner Velma
Boyd-Lawson, who is a physical education
teacher at Wake Forest Elementary, said,
“You do have access to all the school
board members. I don’t depend on just
Lori Millburg. I’ve had parents outside
the school district come to me for help,
and I go to other school board members.
I just go to them as a citizen” not as a
town commissioner.
“I’m satisfied. Let it
settle out,” Boyd-Lawson said.
She also expressed some
concern about voting on a school issue
as a school system employee, and Jones
said they would handle the question as a
matter of consensus without a formal
vote when they discuss it Tuesday night.
(There may have been an
informal consensus not to even discuss
the matter. This question was not on the
Tuesday night agenda and was not
raised.) |
