Considering the dismal turnout at last week's school board election, isn't it time to roll back the clock and get rid of single-member districts?
Not yet. At least not according to Jim Hartung, one of the driving forces behind the effort to split School District 2 into districts. I saw Jim at Artwalk on Friday (a good time was had by all) and he didn't seem the least bit disheartened. Lots of people still haven't figured out the change, he said (a depressing but probably accurate observation), and, anyway, enough good candidates surfaced to avoid a bad outcome.
True enough, I guess. I supported single-member districts for two reasons:
1. School board candidates running races across the entire school district were running in areas substantially larger than legislative districts. In a nonpartisan race for a nonpaying job, that's prohibitively difficult. Candidates either spent a lot of their own money or didn't spend much of anything at all.
2. Different areas of Billings really do have different interests and vote in very different ways. I documented that at considerable length in the Outpost a couple of years ago, but can't link because the site appears to be down for technical reasons.
Both of those reasons still make sense to me. But my big concern was that single-member districts would reduce turnout and make it harder to find good candidates. That concern is still intact.
UPDATE: The link is working now.
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4 comments:
I think part of the problem with this last election was there was not enough information out.
For instance, a map of the districts would have enabled the school district residents to know if they were in the districts involved in the election. I knew there was an election but I was pretty certain it wasn't in my district but I wasn't absolutely sure. A map would have been helpful rather than vague heights and downtown or west end citations. Also a list of polling places open would have worked.
I have met all three new Board members and I think they will do a good job. I think the quality of the people occupying the positions is more important that the number of votes cast.
And a search of the Outpost archives revealed that there was only a short article with sketchy descriptions of where the districts are and little information about the candidates this year. The same search gave me several articles about the 2004 school election.
Maybe a little more in-depth coverage in the Outpost next year will be helpful.
In fact, one problem that SD2 is currently dealing with is communication, with a communication plan approved just last month. But it is hard to get information out when newspaper readership and coverage is dropping and lots of folks don't even watch the local news on TV or listen to often minimal coverage on radio. Even sending news home with students only covers the 25% of households that have school age children.
I would be happy to hear your ideas on how to engage more people. There must be some way to pull them away from American Idol and Fear Factor and generate some interest in something than jello-ification of their gray matter.
If we wopuld have had Districts for School Board members years ago, we would have still had our award-winning school, Garfield Elementary, going strong.
In the past, we've had high-dollar candidates elected to the board, who did a lot of damage.
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