School Board vacancy

Voters just picked two new people to serve on the Clark County School Board. But the electorate will not decide the selection of a third new trustee to oversee the country's fifth-largest school system and its just-hired superintendent, Dwight Jones, starting next month.

Board President Terri Janison is resigning her District E seat to become the community relations director for Gov.-elect Brian Sandoval, and to run his Las Vegas office. Thursday's School Board meeting was her last. Ms. Janison, re-elected in 2008, had two years left on her term representing west-central and northwest Las Vegas.

There are no special elections for Nevada's countywide school boards. State law dictates that trustees themselves fill vacancies on their boards.

So the School Board will accept applications from interested candidates through Jan. 10, then hold public interviews, subject to the open meeting law, starting Jan. 20.

The process turns members of the taxpaying public into lobbyists. Lacking a direct, secret ballot on their preferred candidate, District E residents must appeal to trustees who do not represent them to select the person who will.

It's the wrong approach, especially when education policy, funding and reform will dominate the day-to-day business of the 2011 Legislature.

Trustees invariably will look out for their own interests -- at least partially -- in choosing a replacement for Ms. Janison. They'll want someone they can get along with, someone who shares their philosophy of governance. That person won't necessarily be the best advocate for the schools of District E, which include some of the highest-achieving, most-crowded and least-funded campuses in the system.

Moreover, the person trustees pick will owe the selection not to the voters, but to the trustees. Having a debt to fellow board members could put District E's next trustee in conflict with the wishes of voters. That's not to say it will happen, only that it could. But that possibility alone is enough to warrant changing the way replacement trustees are picked.

This year, the Legislature should change the statute that makes filling School Board vacancies an inside job. Let voters choose their representatives directly.