- New research shows nearly three-fourths of current board members don’t plan to run for reelection after their team, nonprofit group School Board Partners found.
- The research shows most school boards don’t represent the diversity of the students who attend the schools they make critical decisions for.
- It all comes at a time when conservative groups are supporting brand new parents’ rights advocates who want to pass policies that ban racial and social justice curriculum and books from their kids’ classrooms.
Long gone are the days when school board members held onto political power. Nearly three-fourths of board members don’t plan to run for reelection after their current term, new research shows.
A “great resignation” of school board members, including some who have made strides in furthering student equity, will leave hundreds of school board seats up for grabs in the coming years, according to nationally representative research by School Board Partners, a national nonprofit group that trains new school board members.
There are a slew of school board elections next week, and newcomers far and wide across the nation will enter those seats over the next several months. And the members who replace older ones will be the ones making key decisions on what’s taught in schools, how money is spent and to what degree their superintendents are held accountable.
The shift comes at a time when conservative groups are supporting candidates who want to pass local policies that ban racial and social justice teachings in classrooms and books from their kids’ classrooms.
On the other side of the political aisle, some advocates and experts calling for more diversity in school leadership see the turnover as an opportunity to elect members who reflect the demographics of the kids they represent.
“It’s critically important to look at all levels of school organization to ensure they match the diversity of the student population,” said Travis J. Bristol, an associate professor of teacher education and education policy at the University of California Berkeley. “It should be the north star given our country’s long-standing belief that diversity is a strength.”
More:Students walk out, superintendents stress and parents rage: What’s happening as some school boards become more political
Of nearly 600 school board members surveyed across the nation who served before November 2021, 38% percent said they planned on running for reelection when their term expired. It’s a stark contrast from the more than 70% of incumbents who ran for reelection in 2016, according to a Ballotpedia analysis.
In 2018, research from the National School Boards Association showed most members held onto their jobs for long periods of time – even as unpaid volunteers. School board members served 8.6 years on average, the survey results show. At the time, 55% of school board members said they’d run for reelection – an increase from 43% of school board members who said they’re run for reelection in 2010, NSBA found.
John Heim, NSBA’s executive director and CEO, said the group hasn’t tracked recent rates of school board turnover and it’s difficult to do so because every state and community are a little bit different.
“Anecdotally, I’ve heard things like nobody’s running for the board again, and I’ve heard things like there’s no change,” Heim said.
What do school board members do?
The decisions school board members make can have long-lasting effects on kids, said Ethan Ashley, a school board member in New Orleans and co-founder of School Board Partners. But in a climate in which national politics are infusing once local campaigns and national political action committees are funding candidates, many just aren’t prepared for the backlash that comes with the job.
“What students will see if we have new school board members is they’re going to quickly have to get up to speed with issues going on in their schools today,” Heim said.
More:The GOP is strengthening its grip on education. Parents say Democrats are to blame.
In California, former Oakland Unified school board member Shanthi Gonzales resigned from her elected role in 2022 with seven months left in her second four-year term amid outrage over the district’s decision to close several schools in Black and Latino neighborhoods because of declining student enrollment and a slew of financial woes. She served on the board for seven and a half years.
“Our efforts to improve school quality have been inconsistent and not nearly ambitious enough,” Gonzales wrote on her website when she resigned in May.
Three people are in the running to fill the seat she previously held ahead of the November election and the winner will play a major role in managing the same financial problems and grappling with the same issues of declining enrollment, among other things that will impact tens of thousands of students across Oakland.
Gonzales is one of several school board members who resigned over the course of the pandemic. Amid vitriol and harassment, school board members in Oregon, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin also resigned in the last two years, to name a few.
“The great resignation will meet a school board near you,” Ashley said.
More:These PACS are funding ‘parents’ rights advocates’ running for local school board positions
Why are school board members quitting?
Many school board members are at odds with whether they’ll run again once their terms end.
Jasmin Ramirez, a Latina school board member for the Roaring Forks School District in rural Colorado, said she has spent up to 40 hours a week on the job in her role, an unpaid gig. And the backlash of being a Democratic candidate in a conservative part of the state is taking a toll, she said.
She’s still deciding whether to run when her term is up next year.
As a mother of kids in the district, including one who has autism, she worries she’s not spending enough time with them and whether she can make a significant impact on the school board in another term.
“It has been and felt very sacrificial at times. I’ve missed soccer games and ballet practices,” Ramirez said. “The time commitment in itself is tremendous. And it’s a financial strain for Latino families: How do you build generational wealth in a role that comes at a cost that is sacrificial?”
More:Students walk out, superintendents stress and parents rage: What’s happening as some school boards become more political
As a board member, Ramirez helped lead the process of hiring a Latino superintendent in the district and led policy efforts examining student
She said she couldn’t have done it without the support of School Board Partners, and she’s faced many difficulties and learning curves throughout her time on the board.
In Arizona, Tempe Union High School District Board President Brian Garcia, another former fellow of School Board Partners, said he isn’t running for reelection. His term is up at the end of the year.
“I think it’s important to understand your own capacity because that’s going to impact the board and students you’re serving,” Garcia said.
Garcia is one of the first LGBTQ members on the school board, a first-generation college graduate who went through his younger years in school as an English-language learner.
In his time on the board, Garcia led efforts to create a superintendent evaluation policy, reestablish governmental relationships with local tribal communities and passed a resolution granting protections to LGBTQ students.
Despite the accomplishments he’s made, he said as a newcomer he wished he knew the challenges ahead and was trained to navigate them.
Garcia is part of the 2021 cohort of School Board Partners’ two-year fellowship program. The nonprofit chooses elected school board members of diverse backgrounds for the fellowship. Its current cohort of members includes representation from Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, the Norristown Area School District in Pennsylvania and the El Paso Independent School District in Texas.
“One thing that’s significant and helpful to understand is that my mere presence is a threat to the standard operating procedure in the sense of, I wasn’t your typical candidate and not your typical board member,” Garcia said. “I wish I knew there was going to be significant pushback with what I was proposing even if it aligned with administration or folks traditionally there before.”
More:These PACS are funding ‘parents’ rights advocates’ running for local school board positions
School boards members do not look like students or parents
Despite the departures, Ashley said the current climate presents an opportunity to recruit and train new members. And school district leaders should be alarmed and reflect on how they can retain and support the existing board members, the group’s co-founders said.
Because school board members often don’t have access to training on how to manage school budgets, implement the best policies for students and hold their superintendents accountable, School Board Partners runs a fellowship program to teach newcomers how to do their jobs.
The group especially wants to support members whose ethnic and cultural backgrounds reflect the backgrounds of the families in their districts, and are “committed to deconstructing systemic racism in education.”
More:Republicans want to win school boards. They’re winning in white counties by running on race.
School Board Partners’ survey analyzed the experiences and perspectives of people of color who are in school board roles.
The results show many school boards aren’t representative of the communities, parents and students they serve. And it points out school boards are disproportionately white, female and older, according to the group’s research.
The authors warn that when school boards are overwhelmingly white and less diverse than the communities they serve, they lack members who are more inclined to bring their lived experiences on equity to the table, address systemic racism and close achievement gaps. The demographics of nearly 660 school board members the group surveyed compared to national percentages of student populations from the National Center for Education Statistics and other national groups show some of the disparities in representation:
- 64% White compared with 46% of K-12 students
- 15% Black compared with 15% of K-12 students
- 7% Hispanic compared with 28% of K-12 students
- 2% Asian compared with 5% of K-12 students
- 13% Bilingual speakers compared with 23% of K-12 students
- 9% have disabilities compared with 14% of K-12 students
- 6% LGBTQ compared with 16% of K-12 students
“Members of color must have a seat at the table,” the report reads. “They bring a missing, overlooked point of view on equity, addressing systemic racism and closing achievement gaps.”
More:Latinos will make up nearly a third of US students in 2030. Will schools help them succeed?
More people who are LGBTQ are running for school boards, according to a new report by the LGBTQ Victory Fund, as conservative parents rights’ candidates move to ban books and lessons involving racial and social justice, and support state and local policies that attack transgender and nonbinary students.
More:Number of LGBTQ school board candidates has grown in 2022 amid controversial bills
Yet there are many challenges school boards face in being truly equitable, said Carrie Douglass, a co-founder of School Board Partners and Bend-La Pine Schools school board member in Oregon.
School Board Partners’ leaders are urging districts and cities to provide support and resources “to remove the barriers to representative participation in school governance.” That could include a fair wage to expand who takes on those roles.
“We envision a future in which all school board members advocate for education justice and challenge directly the institutional and structural racism that has plagued our schools for generations,” the report reads.
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @kaylajjimenez.