A Florida school board candidate who lost his race in a county south of Jacksonville will get a seat on the board anyway, after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped him to fill a vacancy.
Derek Barrs will take an open seat on the Flagler County School Board in northeast Florida, succeeding a member who resigned in September, allowing DeSantis to appoint a replacement rather than the seat going on the ballot for voters to decide.
Why on Earth does the governor have that power? That’s not a state issue it’s a local issue. I could see the mayor having that power, I can’t understand why it’s in the jurisdiction of the governor.
Party of small government, amirite?
It’s not at all unusual to have to replace resigning school board members. But they must be taking advantage of a loophole to have the Governor do the appointment directly.
Under state law, the governor can appoint someone to fill a vacant state or county seat if there’s less than 28 months left in the term for that office.
According to the article, the election was just held in August. This tells me that the school board term must only be 2 years, if there is less tha 28 months left to it 3 months in. So, anyone who resigns from any school board whose term is that short will have their successor picked by the Govenor? It seems like a law that is only in place as a power grab for the governor.
I can understand not wanting to run a board short one member or paying for a special election in a school district for a short period of time. But that law should be limited to a much shorter period, like 8 or 10 months left in the term.
Judge appointments work in a similar way, I assume other offices do as well. Judges often decide precisely when they are going to retire in order to manipulate how their replacement is chosen, by vote or by appointment. These positions SHOULD be mostly non-political and merit based in general. In reality, just like economics, politics is inevitably everywhere. The real solution here is to get out the vote for every election at every level, not just the big federal one every 4 years.
That’s the way voting in a Republic, where you’re not voting directly for every position, law, and amendment, should work. The Republic falls apart and corruption and manipulation of the public will becomes easier when people don’t turn out to vote at the smaller election cycles. The death of local news plays into this too as it becomes much more difficult to stay informed about the people and politics of those smaller local elections. If you think our representative system is broken and needs to change, the solution is the same, get out and vote for every election and support local investigative journalism.
The death of local news plays into this too as it becomes much more difficult to stay informed about the people and politics of those smaller local elections.
Case in point: my county had a bunch of judges up for election and when I did my reading on them I found out about a huge corruption scandal playing out right now. Nothing that will make national headlines, probably. If I’d just read the recommendations I’d not have heard, and voted those bastards back in. Local news is super important.
vote!!! vote!!! vote!!! It takes longer to excise the poison than to administer!!!
Please, for the love of all things precious, VOTE!
So if you want to know how elections will work under a federal Republican administration…
Abolish school boards. Schools should be managed by the teachers, students, and support staff.
It’s going to be really annoying bringing every teacher, student and support staff in for votes over every budgetary item. Not sure how you make that work.
Do you need every teacher, student, and support staff to decide on every budget item? No. There are ways of organizing large groups without electing boards and representatives. I won’t deny schooling would need to be restructured, but I think school needs restructuring anyways.
Out of pure curiosity, what are the alternatives to electing representatives?
I don’t think moat people understand how many decisions a school committee makes or how busy the average teacher student or support staff are in their day to day lives. We can’t seem to edge past 2/3s of the populace voting once a year for very important matters. How are you going to get all those people to do that multiple times over the year?
Groups within the school (however they want to organize themselves) could elect delegates (basically messengers) to reach decisions. That is how Europe developed its continental railway system (Kropotkin talks about it in Conquest of Bread). Its also a situation of let them figure out how they want to organize. I don’t think people not involved in the school should be deciding how a school is run. People should be free to organize themselves through voluntary association, not have decisions forced on them. Its about consent, and I can tell you right now, teachers typically do not like school boards.
The best way is probably not to say it’s an impossible task from the outset, eh?
There are details to work out, but it’s still better
Like idk, everyone having a say, but maybe one person being more actively doing it, one who we could all decide on by voting?
Very soon, this fuckbag will be ineligible for reelection, and will very likely just disappear.
We Floridians have to put up with him for two more years, but I guarantee you, change is coming.
He will just end up in Congress with the others like him
I doubt it. He’s so toxic, he won’t even be able to score a spot on Newsmax.
He’s so toxic, he
won’t evenwill be able to score a spot on Newsmax.Fixed that for you. For the likes of Newsmax, the more toxic the better.
I don’t know about that. Way too many of those idiots down here. I hope you are right though.
Yeah, this is in line with everything else DeSantis has ever done.
