Push to Mandate Elected School Boards in Virginia Hits Dead End

A controversial effort to change how Virginia’s school boards are filled hit a dead end Thursday evening, as legislation to prohibit candidates from being appointed failed to advance out of a Senate subcommittee.

Senate Bill 1404, sponsored by Sen. Stella Pekarsky, D-Fairfax, sought to require all school board candidates to be elected, not appointed. The bill, which faced a similar defeat two years ago, stalled in a 2-2-2 vote in a Senate Education and Health subcommittee.

While a handful of individuals supported the measure, the opposition was louder and included representatives from influential groups like the Virginia School Board Association, Virginia Association of Counties, Virginia Municipal League, and Hanover County Board of Supervisors.

“This bill would subvert the electorate’s will in each locality it seeks to force change upon,” said Alan Seibert, constituent services and government relations officer for Roanoke City Schools.

Seibert pointed out that since 1992, localities have had the ability to decide through referendums how their school boards should operate, fostering “collaboration and teamwork over the decades.”

Currently, most of Virginia’s school boards in its 132 school divisions are elected, but the bill aimed to eliminate the opposition entirely — a move local governments and school board advocates argued against.

According to the Virginia School Boards Association, 12 school boards in the commonwealth remain appointed, including those in Manassas Park City, Roanoke City and Hanover County, which appointed new members as recently as  May, following voters’ rejection of a measure two years ago to convert its appointed school board into an elected body.

The referendum came as no surprise to Pekarsky, who attributed it to significant spending by groups seeking to maintain control.

“People, like parents, who are sitting here, who do not have those same resources to go out and educate others about the importance of perhaps an elected school board, are at a huge disadvantage. So I’m not surprised that a referendum failed,” Pekarsky said. “Referendums fail all the time, and if you look at how and why, it’s because people with money are trying to control the process.”

Pekarsky argued that school boards should be more accountable to their communities, emphasizing the importance of parents and taxpayers having a say in who serves on these boards.

Her legislative effort came in the wake of a failed 2023 bill by Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg, which aimed to let local governments petition a circuit court to hold a referendum on whether school boards should be elected. Walker’s bill was defeated in the Democratic-controlled Senate without a companion bill being heard.

Critics of appointed school boards, including the Virginia NAACP and ACLU of Virginia, have pushed for elected boards amid mounting frustrations over decisions related to reopenings during the pandemic and policies for transgender students.

Unlike Walker’s proposal, Pekarsky’s bill did not include provisions for local referendums, seeking instead to eliminate appointed school boards outright.

by Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury

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