From Bill Robinson, Chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party

The Sentinel has been on the wrong side of this issue for quite some time. The comparison of the School Board to the Cabinet is a flawed one. The School Board has an odd number of members, duly elected, and therefore cannot have a tie. Adding the eighth member, as proposed, not only gives that person the ability to make the tie, but also to break it.

This is an end-run around the democratic process already in place and functioning. If you don't like what the School Board does, elect new members. But that isn't their problem; not once have any of the proponents of this offensive plan articulated a valid reason for adding the position.

This is a school concurrency issue. sYou have to pay attention to who is supporting this; no educators, no child advocates, and no one who doesn't have a financial interest or doesn't have clients with such an interest is driving this proposal. It works for those who want one-stop shopping at the School Board on concurrency issues, saving the trouble of lobbying several School Board members directly.

This position creates serious concerns under the Voting Rights Act, and undermines all of the hard work and perseverance of those who fought for single member districts, including our strong African-American community and its leaders.

This position threatens not only the hard-earned progress that single-member districts represent, but threatens to set us back as a community from an equality standpoint, something none of us, regardless of political affiliation, should countenance lightly.
But there are practical considerations here that are being ignored.

At the end of the day, our School Board leaders are the caretakers of the education of most of our children, and are not a contract-dispensing machine as some would have it become. Part of that role is to assist in responsible development of our communities, and to shift the interest in that endeavour from the children to developer interests is shortsighted at best, and destructive to our communities.

Single-member districts also serve the inherently local nature of schools. What works in College Park may not be as effective in Winter Park, and each School Board member brings those unique, localized needs to the table so that a course can be charted that accounts for localized needs as well as maintains a countywide vision. This proposed position would undermine that to the detriment of our children's education. I don't want to sound trite, but the education of our children must be paramount, and that is not the objective of proponents of creating this office.

Not only does this proposal overly politicize and undermine our attempts to provide a strong public education system, but it does so without providing any sort of benefits that might make a compromise attractive. Andy Gardiner and the rest of the people who have been outspoken in favor of this proposal have been unable to identify any benefits for our children, and have really been unclear as to any benefit at all, although the benefits for those aligned with them are apparent.

This proposal, and the Sentinel's position thereon are intellectually dishonest, and fail to consider the whole picture. Most alarmingly, our children's interest is clearly not at the top of the priority list, and maintaining equality of opportunity and community is apparently not on their list at all.

Our School Board has accomplished an A rating here, and even if that's not enough to sway you, please oppose this proposal on November 4th for the sake of our children's education and to preserve real democracy.