School Boards accross the Commonwealth are staffed in one of two ways: appointed or elected. In the case of Manassas, we have an elected School Board. It was originally appointed but several years ago (not sure exactly when) a referendum was held and we switched to the current elected system (BTW, it’s my understanding we would have to do the same to switch back).
Regardless of which system one employees, the other system always seems better…:) Having only ever worked with an elected board, I can’t tell you which works better. I think, as always, it depends on who is on that board and how hard they work. Same is true of Council or a Board of Supervisors.
I was, however, very surprised to see this little doozy out of Fairfax. I’m not a proponent of state-level electeds fooling around in local business – they need to stick to their own sphere – but it seems like they have had enough over there….