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Demands of the job and government mandates often scare off candidates.

By JOSIE HUANG Staff Writer August 8, 2007

Before the last school board election in Westbrook, the panel's chair, Colleen Hilton, went on a recruiting blitz to find candidates, phoning 20 residents she admired for their volunteer work and commitment to children's causes.

Not one person said yes.

"I wasn't shocked," said Hilton. "Most of the people are overworked and overrun and they know how much time serving on the school board would take."

The sentiment is common throughout southern Maine, according to education experts, and it was very apparent during this summer's elections. Races for more than a dozen school board seats went uncontested in towns such as Kennebunk and Hollis, and write-in candidates were the only option for individual seats in West Bath and Dayton.

Not only is it difficult to fill seats, it's hard to keep people in them. The Maine School Boards Association said fewer members are serving more than two terms, creating a vacuum of institutional knowledge on some boards at a time when educational bureaucracy is becoming harder to navigate.

In Portland, inexperienced school board members -- most have served less than one-and-a-half years -- are being criticized for an estimated $2.5 million budget deficit.

"People are not staying on boards as long as they used to," said Dale Douglass, executive director of the school board association. "Because of all the demands, they are apt not to seek re-election again."

Civic involvement has been on a decline for several decades, according to national surveys, and low participation can be a problem for town councils and the Maine Legislature.

But school board members say a mounting number of state and federal mandates imposed on the educational system is further discouraging would-be candidates.

On top of construction projects and curriculum changes, school board members are dealing with changes in the state's formula for allocating aid, unpredictable rises in special education costs and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which holds schools accountable for low test scores.

And just this year, the Legislature passed a school consolidation law that requires school budgets to go to public referendum.

Steve Onos, a South Portland school board member, said the new law has already scared away potential candidates.

"They don't want to have to get the budget passed, and have it put out to voters only to be nitpicked and have to potentially go back to the drawing board," Onos said.

He said school board races have gone uncontested in the city for the past three years, and it is a struggle to get even one qualified candidate for each seat.

With three terms expiring in November, including his own, Onos said, "It's worrisome that we might have a seat or two that comes up and no one runs for it."

There still is healthy competition for seats on some school boards, particularly in wealthier suburbs outside Portland. But even they are experiencing higher turnover rates than a couple of decades ago, when it was commonplace for members to serve for 12 or 15 years, Douglass said.

After serving one term on the board for SAD 15, which includes Gray and New Gloucester, Anne Gass decided not to run again in 2003.

Gass, a business consultant in Gray, said she felt she was making little difference, despite the 15 hours or so she spent each week on school business.

She recalled the board spending "thousands of hours" on coming up with educational standards for Maine Learning Results, only to have the state revise its guidelines.

Gass, who was already sending one child to private school, began to ask herself, "Why am I beating my head against the wall?"

"The system is so hyper-regulated that there's no room for me to add any value," Gass said.

Richard Barnes, who has been a consultant to school boards around the state, said members are less willing to run for re- election because they sense they have less power compared with their...