“Elections shouldn’t exist”: The new war on school boards
The new education "reform" fight is over who chooses school boards: the mayor or the people. One city fought back
On Election Day 2012, as voters around the country chose between two presidential candidates who both touted policies that would make it easier to fire teachers, voters in Bridgeport, Conn., rebuffed a referendum backed by Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg and the local Democratic Party. By a seven-point margin, Bridgeport rejected city charter changes that would have ended school board elections. It’s the latest round in Bridgeport’s multi-year battle over a below-the-radar front in America’s reform wars: Who should pick school board members – mayors or voters?
“Nobody thinks that a bunch of hedge fund managers from Greenwich are going to make their schools any better,” said Lindsay Farrell, the executive director of the Connecticut Working Families Party, one of the groups that spearheaded the opposition effort. “And the right to vote has been a hard-fought right. So people were reluctant to give it up and didn’t trust who they