As per New York State education law the eligibility requirements for school board elections are quite inclusive. Presently these requirements make it easy for just about anyone, residing in his or her school district, to run for a school board seat.

This means active schoolteachers, whether employed in-district or out-of-district, retired schoolteachers and these two groups of teachers’ relatives (spouses and others) can run for the school board. This should not be. They should not be allowed to run. The conflicts-of-interest are so evident no explanation is needed. These people have a pronounced education bias; it lends itself to giving much more weight to student education than taxpayer affordability in the task of striking a proper balance between the two in the calculus of school budgets. 

Some area local school boards have members from the above-mentioned groups making for an uneven playing field. As long as the current eligibility requirements remain in place without an amendment excluding these groups, school district resident-taxpayers will always be behind the eight ball and not receive financial fairness. The time is long overdue to level the playing field; to that end an exclusion amendment would be a huge step forward !!!!