FARMINGTON – Regional School Unit 9 directors agreed informally Tuesday to stay with the weighted voting system started in 2010 when Starks joined the nine other district towns.
They make look at it again after the 2020 census.
The board is constitutionally required to be apportioned by the one-person, one-vote rule, Chairwoman Jennifer Zweig Hebert said.
The board received a legal opinion from the district’s lawyers after some people requested it, including resident Craig Stickney and Director Ross Clair, both of Chesterville.
According to the opinion of attorney Gregory Im of Dummond Woodsum, the board’s current apportionment complies with relevant statutes. Directors’ votes are weighted to reflect each municipality’s percentage of the total population of the district, according to the opinion.
The plan apportions 1,000 votes among the district’s 16 board members representing the 10 towns, based on each town’s population as determined by the 2010 U.S. Census, Zweig Hebert said.
Each board member has a weighted vote that is a whole number, and the total number of weighted votes has not been increased or decreased by more than 5 percent and no board member has voting power greater than 11.3 percent, Im’s opinion states.
Under this method of apportionment, the town of Farmington has 42 percent and the town of Wilton has 22 percent of the voting power. Although the one-person, one-vote principle is adhered to, this apportionment may create a perceived sense of voter inequality, Im stated.
In a footnote, he wrote, that “this sense of inequality, however, may truly be a matter of perception because, under Maine law, school board directors represent the interests of the school district as a whole, rather than the municipality or sub-district from which they are elected.”
Farmington has five directors, Wilton three and there are one each from the towns of Chesterville, Industry, New Sharon, New Vineyard, Starks, Temple, Vienna and Weld.
Stickney said when he had a discussion with Superintendent Tom Ward he was told all of the directors represent all the students in the district.
Each one of the directors should represent one vote, Stickney said.
The board uses the weighted formula to determine if an issue passes.
The legal opinion offers alternative methods, and he believes in all fairness the apportionment should be changed, Stickney said.
One alternative method provides for sub-district representation with sub-districts of approximately equal population size that must be, as far as practicable, whole municipalities, Im wrote.
The other two methods provide for at-large voting for all board members and any other method of apportionment that satisfies the requirements for one-person, one-vote.
Im gave an example of a new alternative method of board apportionment that may alleviate the perceived voter inequality that recently has been approved by the commissioner of the Department of Education.
Under this method, school board members are elected at large, however, the candidates for some or all of the board seats are subject to residency requirements.
The district could maintain its 16 school board seats by the election at large by the entire district. Ten of the seats, one member for each town each representing 6.25 percent of the vote, would have a residency requirement. There would be no residency requirement for six other seats, which would each have the voting power of 6.25 percent, the opinion’s data shows.
There are two ways to change the size, composition or apportionment of a school board. One procedure requires a finding by the commissioner that the school unit board is not apportioned in accordance to the one-person, one-vote method. The commissioner may make a determination on his own initiative or upon receipt of a request by the regional school unit’s board or a petition signed by at least 10 percent of the number of people who voted from the towns in the district in the last gubernatorial election, Im wrote.
“Because nothing suggests that the district’s current apportionment does not comply with the one-person, one-vote principle, the district would not follow these procedures,” he stated.
Where reapportionment is not required for constitutional reasons, the law governing RSU boards provides that following the initial certification of a regional school unit, “any change in size, composition, or apportionment of a regional school unit board must be determined by a joint meeting of all the municipalities in the regional school unit.”
dperry@sunmediagroup.net
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