By John Kanelis
Published March 21st 2004 in Amarillo Globe-News
Cumulative voting is returning to the Amarillo Independent School District.
For the third time since 2000, voters will elect school trustees using a voting system designed to help put more minorities on the seven-member board.
It's done its job well - more or less.
Four AISD seats are up for election on May 15. They are held by Pete Smith, James Allen, Anette Carlisle and Rita Sandoval. Of the four trustees, only Sandoval is stepping down. The other three are seeking re-election.
Cumulative voting came into being in 1999 as a result of a lawsuit by civil-rights groups against the Amarillo district. The plaintiffs, led by the League of Latin American Citizens, sued the district over its at-large voting system. The trustees each represent the entire district, not single-member districts. LULAC and others who wanted to create single-member districts in AISD complained that the AISD board was weighted too heavily with trustees who lived in the neighborhoods of overwhelmingly Anglo southwest Amarillo.
The school district settled with the plaintiffs, agreeing to the cumulative voting system. Here's how it will work this year: With four places on the ballot, voters can apportion their votes in any combination adding up to four. One candidate could receive as many as four votes off a single ballot.
Such a voting plan does have its potential pitfalls. A major concern is that an activist group of any stripe could marshal enough support to elect someone to push a specific agenda.
Happily for the Amarillo district, that hasn't happened.
The three non-Anglo candidates elected to the board since the advent of cumulative voting - Sandoval, Allen and Janie Rivas - all have served the entire district with distinction. They, along with the Anglo board members, have been fierce advocates for all the district's 30,000 students and more than 3,600 employees. Moreover, the entire board can take credit for the district's stunning electoral victory in 2003 of a $108 million bond issue that will build several new schools and modernize, improve and revamp virtually every campus in the district.
I will admit to some trepidation when AISD agreed to the cumulative voting system. I perceived it falling just a half-step short of a ward system in which elected officials would look out for the interests of their neighborhood over the interests of the entire district. Such a system, which many school districts in Texas with heavy minority populations employ to elect their trustees, quite often breeds resentment among trustees and their constituents.
Today, I am happy to declare that those concerns have been put to rest.
The credit belongs to the community that has responded to the cumulative system by electing responsible public officials.
The system isn't perfect. Where has it fallen short? It hasn't generated a significant increase in voter turnout. Particularly in neighborhoods with heavy African-American and Hispanic populations, turnout continues to languish in the low single digits. Indeed, the entire district's turnout has been pitiful.
It's an oddity, to say the least, that school district constituents who profess great interest in their children's education don't take time to vote for the people who set public school policy. These people are responsible directly for spending the money that comes from property owners' pockets. In Amarillo - as in the neighboring Bushland, Canyon, River Road and Highland Park districts - school taxes comprise the vast bulk of most people's total property tax bill. Still, Amarillo's attempt to gin up interest in all its neighborhoods through cumulative voting hasn't yet worked.
I surely don't want a crisis to engulf the school district to produce such turnout. History is replete with examples, however, of political trauma being the single-largest lure for voters. When a school district is functioning well, as Amarillo's is doing, voters lose interest no matter their ethnic origin.
For cumulative voting to be declared a complete success, turnout has to increase. Single-digit voter turnout doesn't produce a mandate for anything.
For the third time since 2000, voters will elect school trustees using a voting system designed to help put more minorities on the seven-member board.
It's done its job well - more or less.
Four AISD seats are up for election on May 15. They are held by Pete Smith, James Allen, Anette Carlisle and Rita Sandoval. Of the four trustees, only Sandoval is stepping down. The other three are seeking re-election.
Cumulative voting came into being in 1999 as a result of a lawsuit by civil-rights groups against the Amarillo district. The plaintiffs, led by the League of Latin American Citizens, sued the district over its at-large voting system. The trustees each represent the entire district, not single-member districts. LULAC and others who wanted to create single-member districts in AISD complained that the AISD board was weighted too heavily with trustees who lived in the neighborhoods of overwhelmingly Anglo southwest Amarillo.
The school district settled with the plaintiffs, agreeing to the cumulative voting system. Here's how it will work this year: With four places on the ballot, voters can apportion their votes in any combination adding up to four. One candidate could receive as many as four votes off a single ballot.
Such a voting plan does have its potential pitfalls. A major concern is that an activist group of any stripe could marshal enough support to elect someone to push a specific agenda.
Happily for the Amarillo district, that hasn't happened.
The three non-Anglo candidates elected to the board since the advent of cumulative voting - Sandoval, Allen and Janie Rivas - all have served the entire district with distinction. They, along with the Anglo board members, have been fierce advocates for all the district's 30,000 students and more than 3,600 employees. Moreover, the entire board can take credit for the district's stunning electoral victory in 2003 of a $108 million bond issue that will build several new schools and modernize, improve and revamp virtually every campus in the district.
I will admit to some trepidation when AISD agreed to the cumulative voting system. I perceived it falling just a half-step short of a ward system in which elected officials would look out for the interests of their neighborhood over the interests of the entire district. Such a system, which many school districts in Texas with heavy minority populations employ to elect their trustees, quite often breeds resentment among trustees and their constituents.
Today, I am happy to declare that those concerns have been put to rest.
The credit belongs to the community that has responded to the cumulative system by electing responsible public officials.
The system isn't perfect. Where has it fallen short? It hasn't generated a significant increase in voter turnout. Particularly in neighborhoods with heavy African-American and Hispanic populations, turnout continues to languish in the low single digits. Indeed, the entire district's turnout has been pitiful.
It's an oddity, to say the least, that school district constituents who profess great interest in their children's education don't take time to vote for the people who set public school policy. These people are responsible directly for spending the money that comes from property owners' pockets. In Amarillo - as in the neighboring Bushland, Canyon, River Road and Highland Park districts - school taxes comprise the vast bulk of most people's total property tax bill. Still, Amarillo's attempt to gin up interest in all its neighborhoods through cumulative voting hasn't yet worked.
I surely don't want a crisis to engulf the school district to produce such turnout. History is replete with examples, however, of political trauma being the single-largest lure for voters. When a school district is functioning well, as Amarillo's is doing, voters lose interest no matter their ethnic origin.
For cumulative voting to be declared a complete success, turnout has to increase. Single-digit voter turnout doesn't produce a mandate for anything.