From Betty S. Burney, Chairman, Duval County School Board

Elected Board Chair: A Bad Idea

In 2006, the Legislature passed a law to permit the election of the Chair of the School Board who would also serve as an eighth member of the School Board.

Because of the possibility that the law could apply in Duval County, we have grave concerns regarding its potential impact on our school system.

First, the addition of an eighth member of the School Board, elected countywide, places a great deal of power in one person, by empowering this person with the ability to cast two votes in the event of a tie and to remove the present system of rotating the Chair. In many urban school systems, with diverse geographic regions, the ability of an economically and demographically challenged region to be heard and to have equal voting power is crucial. This law would reverse the progress that has been made to empower these diverse regions to be heard and dilutes their ability to represent the needs of the children in their communities and to hold a leadership position on the Board.

Secondly, the unnecessary addition of an eighth member of the Board creates the need to provide additional support from the district including staff, salary and benefits. This is wasteful considering the proponents’ inability to articulate any statewide necessity to pass a law narrowly defined to apply to only one or two districts.