Voters will decide Nov. 8 whether to change how Wichita school board members are elected

Wichita school district voters will decide in November how they want their school board representatives to be elected moving forward.

The Wichita Board of Education voted 4-3 Monday night to place on the Nov. 8 general election ballot a question asking USD 259 voters if they want to switch to a district-specific voting model or stick with the current system, which allows district voters to weigh in on all school board races across the city.

“I think it is time to give our community a choice. Let them make the decision,” board member Sheril Logan said.

Critics of the current system say the board would be more representative if members were elected directly by residents in each of the six school board districts. If voters choose to change the election system, the board’s seventh member would still be elected at-large.

The three votes against the measure came from the board’s newest members ⁠— Diane Albert, Hazel Stabler and Kathy Bond⁠ ⁠— who said the push to add a question to the November ballot has been rushed and may be political.

“Our district is failing our students and all this board can think about are political moves to win their reelections,” Bond said, accusing her colleagues of not wanting to run citywide campaigns.

Logan said it’s less political to put the question to voters in a year with no school board races on the ballot.

Ten of 13 speakers in the public forum portion of the meeting said they favored a switch to district-specific voting.

“If you vote ‘yes’ to put district voting on the ballot, you’re saying ‘I represent you and I wish for you to express yourself,’” Sandra Rankin, a retired school psychologist, told the board. “If you vote ‘no,’ you are saying ‘I represent you but don’t want you to express yourself.’”

The current voting system was adopted in 1994 by voters, who opted for a hybrid model with district-specific primaries to narrow the field of candidates before races are decided citywide in the general election.

“I assume the rationale that was presented in 1994 was that electing in the primary by district and the general citywide was designed to encourage board members to focus on all students — not just the students in their district,” former board member Connie Dietz told the board. “This sounds quite reasonable. However, the consequence is then that the school board frequently does not reflect the diversity within our school district.”

Larry Burks, president of the Wichita chapter of the NAACP, said the organization favors district-specific voting because it safeguards against voter disenfranchisement by making representation as direct as possible.

Another public speaker, Carl Nelson, said he thinks it’s more empowering to vote on all seven elected board members.

“Every district is important. You shouldn’t ignore any,” Nelson said. “It increases your workload because you have to think across them, you have to campaign across them, but then it’s a true representation. I can sit here and say this board represents me.”

The Nov. 8 yes or no ballot question will read as follows:

“Six board member positions for the USD 259 Board of Education are now elected from separate districts and one board member is elected at-large. Voters in primary elections vote for member positions from the district where they reside and for an at-large member position. Voters in general elections vote for member positions from all six districts and for the at-large member position. It is proposed the method of electing board members be changed to a system wherein voters in both primary and general elections vote for the members positioned from that district where they reside and for the at-large member position.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2022 at 9:22 PM.