Infighting among local school board members in Pennsylvania can be serious, as anyone who follows board activities is well aware. Nonetheless, disagreements among board members, while heated and occasionally downright nasty, are seldom partisan. Even if we know all of our school board members, and most of us don’t, we generally don’t know their party affiliations.
Now Justin Simmons, a dishonest representative from Lehigh County, has introduced a bill to make school boards even more dysfunctional.
Under present Pennsylvania law, school board members are allowed to cross-file. That means they can run on the ballots of both parties, and many of them do. When you cross-file, the votes from both parties are added to your total. The hope is that school board issues don’t lend themselves to partisan politics.
Interestingly, Simmons’s bill doesn’t make provisions for Independents, Greens, or Libertarians to run in school board elections.
Simmons is the youngster who promised, if elected, to serve only two terms. He lied; he’s running for his third. I guess the salary and perks were just too good. Or maybe he isn’t qualified for anything else. You may have also know him for his absentee record, which is one of the worst in the legislature.
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