From the Editors: One-party governance is a disservice to the people

Earlier this month, a principal in the Wissahickon School District was fired for making some shocking antisemitic remarks during a conversation with another employee. The remarks were accidentally recorded, which is the only reason we know about them. Observers are left to wonder how often such things are said across the Wissahickon School District — as well as others like it.

A spirit of intolerance has settled onto many parts of our educational industry. Wissahickon stands out in this regard only because their employees were inept enough to put it on tape. But closed-minded tribalism — of which antisemitism is a growing part on the Left and the Right — is nothing new to observers of the educational scene. Similar stories in Philadelphia last year and in Lower Merion last month drive home the point: no one in these districts is pushing back against the kind of hateful speech and actions that were once universally considered to be beyond the realm of decency.

Some of this is a nationwide — even worldwide — trend, about which we can do little. But one hope for better governance in our school districts and a check on the runaway radicalism of their employees could come from changing how school boards are elected in the first place. In the Philadelphia area, many suburban districts now have all-Democratic boards. (The city itself has an unelected school board, a topic worth opining on at length in a separate editorial.) In rural areas, the opposite prevails, with all-Republican boards being common.

Neither of these one-party systems benefit students, parents, or the community in which they live. A board without an opposing party member is a board where political orthodoxies are never challenged, and where unspoken agreement and backroom deals take the place of open debate. Monolithic thinking benefits no one, and lets poor decisionmaking run unchecked. Every executive session devolves into a de facto meeting of the local party committee. 

Pennsylvania is one of only nine states that allow partisan school board elections, and the only one where candidates can cross-file with both parties, further muddying the waters. The system is failing, but there are multiple paths toward fixing it. 

One option: non-partisan elections. Forty-one states conduct all of their school board elections this way, and it makes sense, when you think about it: the issues that animate debate between Democrat and Republican at the federal level are usually not relevant to the management of local schools. There is some overlap — Republicans usually want to tax less, Democrats usually want to spend more — but in other ways, the party differences are irrelevant. When it comes to making local schools the best they can be, a Republican and a Democrat from the same town might have more in common with each other than they do with any of their favorite members of Congress. Non-partisan elections make the vote about the people, not the party.

But that requires a considerable level of engagement with off-year elections. Parties are good for telling us something about the candidates, a label that we can understand. Without it, less-knowledgeable voters may have no clue about some of the candidates on the ballot. 

With that in mind, another option might be to split school boards the way county commissions are split, with guaranteed seats for a minority party. The party with the majority of voters in the district would still elect a majority of the board, and policies they back would be carried out. But the presence of minority members would ensure that issues were discussed openly and challenged in public. No district in this state has voters all of one party — more of them should be represented.

Philadelphia has a similar system for its at-large city council elections, and a look at that body will prove that this idea does not necessarily entrench the two-party duopoly, or necessitate good policy outcomes: Philly’s two minority at-large seats are held by members of the socialist Working Families Party. That may not be everyone’s idea of a good party, but it at least suggests that there is an alternate point of view in the room.

Neither of these solutions is a cure-all, but a move away from one-party governance is good for the free exchange of ideas and defeating the most harmful ideas by exposing them to the light of day.