Catherine Ward, a law school student at the University of Virginia who has studied the state constitution, says before the 1971 revisions to the state constitution, there hadn’t ever been language requiring staggered terms for education board appointments. “They had this emphasis – really, for the first time – on terms being staggered,” Ward said. “Most of the debate previously was really focused on who would be appointed, how many members there would be and what their tenure would be.”