"There are not many contested elections for school board members," said Lorraine Deller, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.
Elections for school districts are dominated by the teachers' unions, who have the most cash to spend and the most to lose from reform.New York recently made its schools chief accountable to the mayor.
And 23 years after my first published piece of journalism – an interview with the three candidates for the constituency at the 1987 general election for my school magazine – I've been back regularly over the past few months to find out how this year's contest is shaping up.
After students have completely immersed themselves in campaign research, they take a step back to write their own editorial about who they think should be the next president of the United States.The unit concludes as the class stages a mock election for the school community using the materials they generated over the course of the unit.
There is a small but I think growing realization among academics that they can contribute a lot to the solution of this problem by standing for election for local school boards although I know this is not for everyone.
A day after supporters of the state-appointed schools superintendent won elections for the school advisory board, the state's education commissioner announced yesterday that the superintendent's only rival for the job had withdrawn his name from consideration.
Among those on the candidate track were Tammy Pust, who is running for mayor of Roseville, a St . Paulsuburb, this fall; several people who had already won and lost elections for local school boards or the state legislature; and many like Marty Schoen, 43, who introduced himself to the group by saying: "I will be running for something.
At the local level, they play in elections for the school boards which are actually in charge of the more than one thousand districts which govern the individual schools, with which they participate in the collective bargaining process.
Then they will hold a mock election for the grade, school or community using all of the materials they generated during the unit.
Special attention is being paid to the upcoming Board of Education election for San Francisco's school district in light of a report released in December by the San Jose Mercury News that highlighted disparities in trustee pay at various Bay Area districts.
