Diverse school board is best

Gazette Editorial Board

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Days before Tuesday's election, two incumbent Cedar Rapids school board members warned that the local teachers union was working to replace three incumbents with candidates who are retired educators in hopes of creating a majority influence. As it turned out, none of those challengers won.

But was the Cedar Rapids Education Association out of line for supporting the campaigns of the three retirees, plus an ironworker and longtime leader in his union (as endorsed on the CREA website)?

Of course not. Any organization has the right to endorse candidates for election. It's done all the time. It's how things work in a democracy.

At the same time, we think it's best for communities and constituents when a school board, or any publicly elected, policy-making board, represents a variety of interests, experience and expertise.

We disagree with Sunny Story, one of the CREA's preferred candidates, who told a Gazette reporter on Monday that “I expect our school board to be made up of educators and others in the profession.” She referenced a hospital board, saying that she would expect it to be made up of doctors and others in the medical profession.

Well, that's not the case, for example, at St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids. Five of the 25 board trustees are physicians. Others come from many walks of life.

Public and private organizations are better off with a diverse, skilled group of people in leadership positions who are willing to challenge the status quo and offer different ideas. A balance of stakeholders better serves the community's interests.

One of the Cedar Rapids incumbents, Ann Rosenthal, noted the potential problem when one interest group dominates a school board, saying “it risks limiting parental input on the board in favor of initiatives more focused on the interests of just one shareholder group.”

So is the Cedar Rapids school board more or less diverse than before Tuesday's election? Judge for yourself. The only new member, Allen Witt, is an engineer and a principal owner in a firm, He replaces Melissa Kiliper-Ernst, a community volunteer with a finance background who did not seek re-election.

Otherwise, the seven-member board includes three University of Iowa employees in various administrative/manager posts, none of them professors, and one the only minority board member; a retired teacher and past union president; an appraisal business owner; and an account manager for an energy company.

Motivated individuals and organizations drive the list of candidates who wind up on local ballots. Voters get the final say. And if you were among the vast majority of registered voters who didn't cast a ballot on Tuesday, you had no say.

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