Timing Is Everything: Should School Board Elections Be Moved to Coincide With November Voting? |
Fall 2010 • Volume 8 • Issue 3
By law and tradition, New York citizens stride to the polls each May to elect or reelect school board members. Many other states similarly host spring ballots to select who sits on boards of education.
But turnout is chronically low, prompting critics to ask whether school elections are a meaningful democratic process. Turnout was14.2 percent in school elections statewide in May 2006, according to a study by the Local Government Education Committee, a municipal training organization based in Oneida County,N.Y. In the same year, 40 percent of eligible votersin New York State turned out to vote for governor,and 63 percent participated in 2004 voting for president.
