Note: This article was originally published in the Beacon Hill Paper, October 10, 1996.

For the sake of a slogan, the voters of Boston may destroy our schools.

The slogan is, “Let democracy rule.” It is the heart of the argument made by those who urge us to do away with the current appointed school committee and return to the elected school committee. It may have surface appeal, but is a deeply flawed argument.

Question 2 on the ballot this November asks voters whether we should return to an elected school committee. Presently the school committee is appointed by the Mayor. Consisting of seven members, the appointed committee has been in place since 1992.

The appointed committee came into being in 1992 in the wake of a citywide effort to reform the Boston schools. For years Boston’s schools had deteriorated. Parents were abandoning the system in droves, putting their kids in private or parochial schools or, even worse, leaving the city altogether. Educational reformers argued that the then-elected school committee was the major impediment to improving Boston’s schools. Doing away with the elected committee and vesting responsibility for education in the Mayor’s hands would create a system where one person — the Mayor — would be responsible for the system’s success or failure. It also would allow school committee members to focus on education, rather than politics.

In the beginning, the appointed committee had an admittedly rough couple of years. The then superintendent of schools, Lois Harrison-Jones, had been chosen by the outgoing elected committee and was at odds with Mayor Ray Flynn. Little progress was made initially. But the wisdom of the move to an elected committee quickly became apparent after Tom Menino’s election in November of 1993. Menino quickly realized that he would be blamed for the school system’s continuing failures. Unlike prior mayors, he couldn’t slough off responsibility to the elected members of the school committee. Menino also realized the converse: improvements to the school would also be to his credit.

As a consequence, Menino engineered the departure of Harrison-Jones and the selection of Tom Payzant as superintendent in 1995. To his credit, Menino visited the schools within the system. He pushed to increase the budget and charged his appointed committee with developing tough, measurable standards for educational quality.

Not everyone agrees with Menino’s tack on improving schools. I, for one, would have preferred a more dramatic approach than Menino’s incremental improvements. But the fact remains, it is 1992’s structural change that has resulted in any improvement at all. Take away that reform by reverting to an elected committee and the prognosis for the schools is grim.

And what of the democracy argument? It’s really a red herring. The question is not whether the success of the schools is ultimately subject to “democratic” control. Democracy will rule in either case. The question is, who controls — a democratically elected mayor or a democratically elected school committee? For the sake of our children, for the sake of the schools, it should be the Mayor. That’s why I urge you to vote “No” on Question 2: don’t allow the elected school committee to return.