School code spells out process for voting changes
School boards that recognize lopsided voting regions or residents unhappy with the way they pick their representatives can go to the Pennsylvania School Code for help. Beth Gaydos, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education, said the process is spelled out in section 3-303, Title 24, of the code.
Summarized, the code says the board of directors or a group of electors may petition the local court for a change.
A key point of the school code provisions refers to population. In a regional voting system, the population in each region must be “as nearly equal as possible.” However, any penalties for violators are not mentioned.
Gaydos acknowledged that the department does not routinely look for violators of this provision, but the department is the enforcer of the school code.
“If the department gets a complaint, they would investigate,” Gaydos said.
Stuart L. Knade, chief counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA), said that because the school code calls for even distribution of population in the voting regions, questions are most likely to arise on the heels of the U.S. census.
“You need to look at the latest census data and make sure there is basic evenness in representation. It is suggested to look at the election regions every census to see if it is out of whack,” he said.
Knade said PSBA makes no recommendations on how a district’s directors should be elected.
“This is not all or nothing. There can be some regional seats and some at-large. Some have nine different regions. Most (with regions) operate with three regions and three board members elected from each. About 65 percent are at-large,” Knade said.
Pennsylvania voters are more likely than not to choose their school board members from a pool of all candidates for all open seats.
Anne Herald of the PSBA research staff said that, every other year during the primary election, PSBA does a survey that includes the method of school board election.
Of the 501 school districts, 317 responded to the 2001 PSBA Research Inquiry on School Board Election Results.
“The last survey was out in July 2001. Based on the districts that responded, 60.2 percent are at-large, those with three regions are 31.5 percent and nine regions are 6.1 percent. The last category of combined regions and at-large is 2.2 percent,” Herald said.
The survey is a compilation of information and does not name the individual school districts.
“We try to stay out of how board members get elected. We don’t recommend a particular way,” Knade said. “There is the observation it’s easier to run an at-large district, but if you have a population center, there can be a power center that runs the district and leaves the outlying areas out, so there are pros and cons.”
Knade said PSBA gets questions “from time to time” about the methods of school board election, and the process of making changes is spelled out in Section 303 of the school code.
“To do this in the first place, a number of electors equal to 25 percent of any one school district can propose a plan for regional elections. Then, it has to be approved by the court. Boundaries provide for population as equal as possible. In the event of any division or change or consolidation, then that must go to the court of common pleas. The point is there has to be court approval,” he said.
Knade acknowledged that school districts sometimes are sued to make a change by residents claiming their U.S. constitutional rights to “one man, one vote” are violated when a school district is divided unevenly.
“We don’t necessarily see a flurry of lawsuits, but the issue comes up,” he said.
While the at-large school districts outnumber the regional districts in Fayette County and just one more of Greene County’s school districts maintains regional voting, Washington County voters are much more likely to choose their school directors from regions than at-large.
Of 14 school districts, nine are regional and four are at-large.
One school district has a combined system of at-large and regional voting that was organized a couple of years ago. Larry Spahr, Washington County director of elections, explained that in Ringgold School District, each of three regions elects two directors, while three are elected at-large.
“Other than Ringgold, no changes have come about,” Spahr said.
Frances Pratt, director of elections in Greene County, said no changes have come up for the school districts there since at least 1996, when she joined the office. And, she said no one has raised questions recently.