Representation by district is better

So what makes more sense: having all Valley voters pick all seven school board members or dividing the Mat-Su Borough up into districts that would select one school board member each?

The arguments for keeping the status quo of at-large school board members representing the entire borough are compelling.

Anti-districting speakers say they worry that assigning districts to school board members will lead to a body where each member is only looking out for his or her own local interests.

The school system is a strange animal in that core-area schools essentially subsidize education in outlying areas where it’s more expensive to provide education for children. Schools in Talkeetna and Glacier View get more dollars per student than schools in Wasilla and Palmer. It’s really just a basic fact of accounting.

With that in mind, it’s not hard to see how problems might arise if school board members see their roles as fighting for more parochial interests than the wellbeing of the entire district. Will those more expensive schools lose out? How much money can they lose and stay open?

Then again, the same can be said for most of Alaska.

The cost of everything in rural Alaska is more expensive than it is in more urban areas like Anchorage and the Valley. The cost of delivering state services there is not immune to those pressures. But there are few who would look at that picture and think state lawmakers should be elected to at-large seats in Alaska.

In fact, the idea is ridiculous on its face. Such a system would lead to an even further consolidation of power along the Railbelt. Whatever voice rural voters have in the Legislature would no longer exist.

Among the current group of school board members, the farthest out of the core area any member lives is Meadow Lakes. Whether that’s actually a problem depends, of course, on one’s point of view. And yes, the school board has done an admirable job keeping schools running in far-flung areas.

But voters outside of Palmer and Wasilla can and should expect at least a few of the people representing them to be chosen from their areas. Who knows the issues that affect Trapper Creek or Chickaloon better than people whose children attend those schools or whose neighbors’ children do?

There is another question of which system is more democratic.

Representation at-large means that any resident can bring his or her concerns to any one of seven school board members and expect their opinions to receive the same weight as those of any other resident.

But representation by district is closer to the people. There are fewer voters competing for the ear of each school board member. Opinions are much harder to drown out or dilute in that environment.

It’s time the school board elected its members by district.