Wake school board tells election officials they will return to 4-year terms
The Wake County school board is now telling elections officials to switch them back to four-year, staggered terms of office beginning with this fall’s elections.
The school board passed a resolution late Tuesday saying that, based on its legal interpretation, four of the nine board seats will switch in this fall’s election to four-year terms, with the other five seats changing in 2024. This comes after elections officials said they couldn’t act on a resolution passed on March 15 that only “suggested” that the changes be made.
“We’re getting this fixed and it feels like a technical correction to make everyone feel comfortable,” school board chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said in an interview Tuesday before the vote.
Under the resolution, this fall’s winners in Districts 1, 2, 7 and 9 will be elected to four-year terms. Districts 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 would stay on two-year terms this fall before switching to four-year terms in 2024.
School leaders say they expect the new resolution will be implemented because it’s the result of a compromise reached with county elections officials and the county’s attorney.
School board used to have four-year terms
For decades, Wake school board members were elected to staggered, four-year terms.
Typically, elected bodies adopt their own redistricting maps. But in 2013, the General Assembly redrew the school board’s election districts and later adopted those maps as well for the Wake County Board of Commissioners.
The legislature’s plan still allowed, though, for four-year, staggered terms.
In 2016, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals declared the legislature’s maps for Wake to be unconstitutional while leaving the rest of the law in place. This led to a federal judge issuing a now-expired court order in 2016 that switched the board seats to two-year, non-staggered terms.
Lawmakers haven’t acted on the school board’s request to return to four-year, staggered terms.
Changes no longer suggested
In November, the Wake County Board of Commissioners voted to return to four-year, staggered terms.
The school board received legal advice that it didn’t have the authority to set it own method of election. This led to the March 15 resolution that adopted new election maps and also suggested the Wake County Board of Elections implement the school board’s proposal for longer terms.’
But Gary Sims, director of the Wake County Board of Elections, said that it was not up to elections officials to interpret the statutes.
“The Board of Elections will review a more specific and revised resolution,” county attorney Scott Warren wrote in a March 24 email to school board attorney Jonathan Blumberg.
The result is the school board’s new resolution no longer suggests that the changes be made. It tells elections officials that the method of election for implementation “is as follows.”
“The Board of Education throughout has acted in good faith and with care and effort to bring about a resolution to the new districts and method of election, including efforts to seek additional local legislation and a careful assessment of the current legal situation, with the goal of providing clarity and stability for candidates and voters,” Blumberg wrote in an email Tuesday to The News & Observer.
This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 10:56 AM.
