Editorials

The Senate Finance and Taxation-Education Committee recently voted 10-1 to send a bill to the floor that would remove Alabama's two-year colleges from under the State Board of Education and place them under their own separate board. The current board would continue to have authority over the state's K-12 schools.

This page has long advocated such a change.

In the past few years, the two-year college system has been rocked by scandals that could have been prevented if the state board and Gov. Bob Riley had kept closer oversight of those institutions.

This is not to suggest that those with that responsibility were necessarily negligent in their duties, but rather to say — again — that members of the state board had too much to adequately monitor. As a result, problems that should have been nipped in the bud were allowed to grow.

Most of the members of the current state board oppose this bill because they feel it implies that they were either not up to the assigned task or that they knowingly ignored the problems and did not address them.

However, this change is not being pushed to punish current (or previous) members of the board. It is an effort to make their job more manageable.

Riley and current two-year college Chancellor Bradley Byrne oppose this bill, contending that it is just another legislative attempt to block the reforms he and the chancellor are pushing. In some cases that might be true.

However, Republican legislators have supported those reforms, and yet all of the Republicans on the committee voted for the bill. If this were an effort to block the changes Riley and Byrne advocate, GOP committee members would have opposed the bill.

Realistically, it is unlikely that a new board will be created in the coming year. Procedural problems with the bill, such as when the new board will be elected, will need clarification.

Also, it will have to be submitted to the U.S. Justice Department for clearance under the Voting Rights Act, and that will take time. And the biggest hurdle may be the Senate itself, which is tied up in a filibuster and probably will not get around to considering the bill.

Nevertheless, this is a good first step. It's appropriate to applaud the Republicans and Democrats who voted for it. It's also appropriate to urge supporters of a separate board to clean up the procedural problems, anticipate any Justice Department reservations that might come up, and lobby senators and representatives so that when it reaches the floor of both houses it will pass.