They urged the school board to go back to the drawing boards and consider a larger plan that built more schools and required a larger bond referendum. So here we are, a year after voters elected a new school board to get on with building classrooms and with no plan that the commissioners will support. Since they have to find the money to build schools, the commissioners have every right to critique the plan. But it is difficult to offer intelligent suggestions when the only thought you have given school building needs can be counted in minutes. We have no problem with giving the school board authority to raise taxes to fund education.
Commissioners look at education budgets as one more in a stack of agency budgets.
But education is unique. It isn't the same as funding other county agencies. That is why we have an elected school board and why it is nonpartisan-because overseeing our schools ought to be left with the representatives of the citizens and certainly can not be left to party politics. The state School Boards Association has asked each of the 117 school districts to support legislation granting taxing authority to school boards. Our guess is that the association has no chance at all in obtaining approval from the General Assembly.