Editor's Note: This story's headline was changed to make clear that the ruling maintains the current at-large voting process.
A Bucks County judge this month turned aside a resident group’s effort to establish voting regions in the Pennridge School District.
The Pennridge School Board is composed of nine directors, each voted into office by the entire electorate in Bedminster, Dublin, East Rockhill, West Rockhill, Hilltown, Perkasie, Sellersville and Silverdale.
A group calling itself the Pennridge Citizens for Direct Representation last year devised a plan to do away with the current at-large voting system.
Instead, it would split the district into three regions — one that includes East Rockhill, Bedminster, Dublin and a portion of West Rockhill; one made up of Perkasie, Sellersville and the rest of West Rockhill; and one that covers Hilltown and Silverdale. Voters would then elect three school board members from each region.
About 2,800 district residents signed a petition in support of the change, according to court documents.
This month Bucks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. denied the residents’ petition for a three-region school district.
“(T)his court finds as a conclusion of law that the current, at-large plan better serves the Pennridge School District,” the judge wrote in his decision.
Bateman provided four reasons for the determination.
1.) A petition from 2,775 electors, he wrote, constitutes a “small minority” of the 35,000 registered voters in the district.
2.) Regional voting would limit residents to casting ballots for three board candidates rather than nine, so the judge wrote that the change would actually erode the electors’ “freedom of choice.”
3.) The petitioners, Bateman said, failed to show evidence that certain groups have historically been disproportionately represented as a result of the at-large system.
4.) The petitioners did not prove their plan would reduce “cost or complexity” for Pennridge, according to Bateman.
A statement from the district applauded the judge’s ruling.
“The District believes that the original plan of election, adopted in 1966, should remain in place unless all of the voters of the District have the opportunity to decide on a change in the form of elections,” the statement read. “The District will continue to defend this matter to assert the right of all the voters to determine how they choose to be represented.”
Members of Pennridge Citizens for Direct Representation could not be reached for comment on the ruling. An appeal by the petitioners appears unlikely.
In previous discussions, however, petitioner Lois Alderice Dodson argued that “Community engagement can be a real challenge reaching all corners of the district with the at-large model. It requires significant resources and time to cover nearly 100 square miles spread out over eight municipalities. Regional representation would reduce those challenges and lead to better relationships between board directors and the communities they represent.”
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