Glen Cove's School Board election this year may have been noisy, fractious, and untidy, but do you remember the last two-seat board election here? Better yet, did you even know it was going on? Or that there was even a result? Well, it was in 1996, and the reason you weren't aware is because the two "winning" candidates didn't even amass a total of 200 votes between them, though both still sit on the Glen Cove School Board.

That invisible "election" was the perfect example of the unfortunately still too prevalent attitude that school board members are best "appointed" by a few well-connected, knowledgeable school district insiders.

Contrast that sickness with the six eager candidates running this time, and the far healthier vote totals reported elsewhere in this issue. We're beginning to get closer to the city council-type governing franchise now necessary since, within the past 50 years, school government expenditures have become twice as much as those of the city government.

But we're still nowhere close enough.

Yes, there was lots of ferment, but what is this strange mentality which seems to be saying that if you don't goosestep along with those who run the schools, you're almost guilty of a so-called "hate crime" -- hating public schools; hating students; hating teachers and all government programs -- whatever -- world without end?

Hey, not to make too much of it, but the US is a First Amendment nation where hate obviously has to be as legal and lawful as love and, therefore, can be no "crime."

Think of the "untidy" ideas promoted this time by all those candidates never accused of being supported by the two outsiders now sitting on the board: school uniforms, or at least a respectable dress code; return to neighborhood schools by ending the elementary paired plan; no social warehousing and fewer free periods for more learning; high school transportation, etc. Wonderful!

However, the way to best assure a continuous fountainhead of practical learning ideas is to have school board members elected to the same strong franchise enjoyed by city council winners. That would mean each school board member would sit with a minimum 3,000 votes behind him or her, but the only way that will happen is to shift school board voting in these 57 small cities to November. Are you listening, Senator Marcellino and Assemblyman Sidikman?

William E. Boeddener