That’s after Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly members voted Tuesday to put the question on the ballot for the upcoming municipal election.
Currently, Kenai Peninsula school board members can serve an unlimited number of three-year terms. That’s compared to borough assembly members and the borough mayor, who are each limited to two consecutive full terms. Assembly members and the borough mayor can also serve a partial, appointed term of no more than two years.
Assembly member Dale Eicher proposed the term limits, saying incumbents bring an advantage with them into each election cycle.
“We talk about elections as though an incumbent and a challenger simply put their names on the ballot, and the voters choose between them on equal terms,” he said. “But research and studies show us that that's not exactly how elections typically work.”
Eicher is running unopposed for reelection this year.
Kenai Peninsula residents have mulled this topic for almost 20 years. In 2007, voters passed a ballot proposition imposing term limits on school board members. The issue ended up in court after a group argued the new limits should apply to incumbent school board members reelected during the same election.
A Superior Court judge determined the ballot proposition was invalid, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed that ruling. Both courts said state law didn’t allow local governments to impose term limits on school board members.
But that changed this year, after state lawmakers passed a bill giving local governments that authority. The bill became law on Aug. 11 without Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature.
Tyson Cox asked assembly members to postpone action on the proposal. He’s a former assembly vice president who says the group should be more intentional about what they hope to achieve by seeking term limits for the school board.
“Do you want new ideas, new candidates?” he said. “Do you want voter choice, income and accountability, institutional knowledge and continuity? Healthy turnover rather than maximum turnover? Term limit policy should be designed around those outcomes, not simply copied from the assembly's term limit policy.”
Cox says school board races are frequently uncontested, and that voters are capable of deciding whether to keep a candidate in office or not.
In a typical election cycle, three school board seats appear on the borough ballot. This year, two of the three races are uncontested. Over the last two years, half of the open school board seats went uncontested.
Sarge Truesdell represents Soldotna on the borough assembly. He’s a former principal of Soldotna High School whose mom has served on the school board for almost seven years. He says term limits will enable effective community representation on the school board.
“I think our school board has a lot of former school teachers on it who understand how schools operate, and maybe have a degree in teaching, and really understand depths, have depth of knowledge for school district policy, and so on,” he said. “But they're not necessarily the voice of the community.”
The assembly voted unanimously to put the term limit question before voters, and then in favor of the ballot language. By the time the proposal went for a final vote Tuesday, it picked up three other co-sponsors.
Election Day is Nov. 3. The deadline to register to vote or update registration information is Oct. 4.
