Essential Estrogen

Although 364 Iowa school districts will have school leaders on the ballot this Tuesday, if history is any indicator, only about 6 percent of eligible voters will take time to voice their opinion. A new initiative launched by the Iowa Association of School Boards hopes to change that.

In 2000, an IASB survey indicated average voter turnout for school board elections hovered around 10 percent and was on par with general elections. The same survey this year indicated the number had slipped to about 6 percent.

"When these numbers from the auditors came back showing that -- depending on district -- turnout numbers ranged from about 4 to 6 percent it was disconcerting," said Jennifer Huffman, communications specialist for IASB. "You don't want to just assume the decrease represents a citizen's lack of awareness for the importance of school governance or a lack of interest in public education."

Huffman says the decrease in voter turnout combined with a difficulty some districts were having finding qualified candidates have led to some county auditors and state legislators to call for a change in the school board election process.

"There are some who have expressed a desire to combine the school board elections with November general elections," she said. "For many reasons, IASB wants the school board elections to remain annually in September."

Non-matching school and city boundaries, voters living in unincorporated areas, partisan politics being a part of general elections and potentially high turnover rates for school board members are just a handful of the reasons the IASB lists for keeping the school board election process in September. In order to keep the elections where they are, Huffman says the ISAB began discussing what they could do to increase voter turnout. A key component to that discussion was the fact that many school districts were having trouble convincing qualified candidates to run for the no-pay volunteer post.

"Back in April or May we began brainstorming the types of things we could be doing throughout the year to encourage people to run for school board," she said. "We partnered with the Farm Bureau, parent-teacher organizations and local chambers of commerce and requested they encourage their civic-minded membership to run for school board. The second part of the campaign we decided to invest some money -- something we had never done before -- for a radio campaign."

The 60-second radio spot, developed by Brownfield Communications as a part of IASB's "Care About Children" program, has been running on more than 70 stations throughout 93 counties since Aug. 27. Radio was chosen both because of it being economical and its ability to reach some of the state's rural areas. The ad highlights four of Iowa's school districts in an attempt to bring awareness to the varied and positive roles school boards can play within a district and a community. Those districts are Ogden, Sioux City, Louisa-Muscatine and Mount Vernon.

Listen to the ad:

Huffman says the four districts were chosen based on their individual excellence and innovative initiatives.

"Sioux City earned last year's T.E. Davidson Award, which goes to a school board every year that we recognize for its accomplishments and increasing student achievement," she said. "The Mount Vernon board was this year's recipient of the award for the stellar things they are doing in their district. We highlighted Ogden because they are one of the early pioneers for working within their community and with their community partners to set up a preschool program within their school system. Louisa-Muscatine has just been doing amazing things with technology in their schools."

In addition to the ad buy, Huffman emailed a copy of the audio file to many key members throughout the state and asked them to forward the file to their friends and neighbors. While not everyone who received the ad ended up forwarding it along, she says some good has still come from the grassroots effort.

"We have some school districts who have placed the file on their websites," she said. "These are baby steps. I knew we weren't going to increase voter turnout to 15 or 20 percent in a three- or four-month period of time and with one radio campaign. It's still a new and valuable way to present what school boards are doing for their districts. Hopefully, they'll be fired up and wanting to do more of it."

At the end of the day, Huffman says she is just hoping the work the IASB has done to find qualified candidates and to increase awareness of school and student excellence will translate to more people coming to polls on Tuesday.