OUR VIEW: Another election with no choice hurts Madison's schools

Instead, two incumbents are running unopposed in Tuesday’s election, which is more common than not. And the bizarre way Madison elects School Board members is partly to blame.

State lawmakers should change an outdated state law — one that applies only to Madison — to encourage greater competition for seats and more choice for voters.

Over the last decade, just 10 of 24 races for Madison School Board have been contested during spring elections. Besides allowing many incumbents a free pass on their — and the district’s — record of improving public education, the dearth of competition cheats our community of an important discussion about the direction of our schools.

Public education is far too important for School Board seats to regularly go unchallenged.

A lot of factors may discourage more people from running. It’s a tough job with long hours, lots of late nights at meetings and plenty of feedback — not all of it nice — from the public. Partisan politics has infected school debates in recent years, diminishing civility.

But the odd way Madison elects its School Board is a significant factor that needs fixing. State law requires candidates in cities with populations between 150,000 and 500,000 — meaning only Madison — to run citywide in seven numbered seats for three-year terms.

So every spring, candidates must choose which of two or three seats they will seek. For competitive reasons, new candidates tend to run for seats that incumbents don’t already hold. That lets incumbents avoid scrutiny.

It also can deny voters choices. For example, an incumbent ran unopposed for Seat 7 last spring, while two new candidates ran for Seat 6. But what if a voter preferred the two newbies over the incumbent? Voters can’t select those two on their ballots.

In theory, a candidate with fewer votes could even win election.

A better system would pit all candidates for Madison School Board in the same pool, with the top vote-getters earning however many seats are available. That’s how most school boards across Wisconsin conduct their elections. Or they assign seats to geographic areas.

The advantage of having all candidates run against one another is that newcomers don’t have to challenge a specific opponent for a specific seat, which can turn divisive.

The late Wayne Strong, who lost a bid for School Board by less than 1 percentage point in 2013, made a convincing case for one big pool of candidates.

“I just think that it would eliminate so much controversy and competitiveness between the candidates, and I think it would encourage people to run, because it’s like, well, I’m not running against a particular person,” Strong told us in 2022 as a member of our editorial board.

He was right. And we’ve been calling for this sensible change ever since.

Doubling the salary for a Madison School Board member in 2015 to $8,000 a year didn’t increase the number of candidates. Three incumbents ran unopposed in the next election.

Madison enjoyed six candidates running for three seats in 2020. But because three of those candidates ran for Seat 6, that left Seat 7 with two candidates and Seat 2 unopposed. So voters couldn’t necessarily pick the three they liked best.

The state imposed at-large seats in numbered districts on Madison in the 1980s. The idea was to encourage more diversity. And today, four of seven board members are people of color.

But it’s not at all clear that the current system is to credit for more board members of color. A majority of City Council members are people of color, too. So is the county’s elected sheriff. So are about 1 in 5 county supervisors, similar to the percentage of the county as a whole. None of those public officials must run in at-large numbered seats.

What is clear is that the current School Board election system cost a candidate of color a shot at a seat in 2013 when she finished a close third in a three-way primary behind two white candidates. In that race, the first-place finisher dropped out before the general election, cinching the race for the second-place candidate, who was the only name left on the ballot.

Another option would be to assign some of the city’s School Board seats to specific neighborhoods.

But letting everyone who wants to run for School Board run against everyone else is simpler and less political. It allows for more choice and should lead to more candidates — something Madison lacks.