April school board elections remind us that the officials we elect shape the future of the school district. The local news media post and League of Women Voters host “get to know the candidate” information and forums to highlight “…this is what I will prioritize if you elect me”. Individual candidates tell us “I will…, vote for me.” We read and listen to understand the differences between candidates. There are so many issues that confront school today that a voter truly needs a score card to keep track of where the candidates stand on any one or all issues. The bottom line, however, is this question: Does board membership make a difference in the long run of educating children? Yes, it does.
The electors of the school district vote to elect board members. Once elected, board members determine the policies and priorities of the schools. Democracy elects and representative government leads. Representatives can make a difference.
A school board’s work is measured by the unique voices of its individual members when they speak and when they vote on board motions. Electors look for promises made to be promises kept. For the most part, campaign promises today speak to contemporary, hot issues and the pandemic has spawned strong sentiments about virus mitigation protocols and student well-being resulting from remote education and masking. Masking, quarantining, and school closures are hot buttons and easily seen as the apparent and immediate issues for respective candidates.
Subliminal to the pandemic-based discussions are arguments of who should make school decisions – the school board or activist parents. That is the key issue of the 2022 school board elections. The argument is what will be taught, how it will be taught, what rules will govern teaching, and what powers will parents have in regulating teaching and learning in school. Check the numerous and growing small, partisan, as in liberal or conservative, politically vocal web sites in your community to observe how and who is crafting these arguments. People in your community gather regularly to rally their causes and memberships are growing.
Read nationally to understand models of parent engagement and protest. Some seem radical and over the top until you read that activist models are being copied and played out more and more often. Small groups of parent voices a commandeering school governance and creating minority voice rules.
What does this mean? It is a long view change in how the writers of state constitutions envisioned and formulated school governance. Our current model is democratic election of representatives who make policies that govern local schools. A new model is governance by political activism. In this model, elected boards make policies that reflect the wants of politically active parents, a minority of the constituency. Policies may “ping pong” between the most active of activist groups and the media coverage of their demands, but the premise is the same regardless of parent group – school boards must represent the immediacy of parent activism.
This is a watershed argument for a change that flies in the face of the community. School boards are elected to represent the entirety of a community not just the parents of the moment. Board members are elected by residents whose children did not attend the local school or attended local schools decades ago. They are elected by taxpayers whose interest is that schools educate all children to be the good and productive future taxpayers of the community. They are elected by adults who want children to be prepared for the unknowns of their future. School curriculum is not to be partisan but broad and leading to objective, informed, and inquisitive student thinking. Teachers are not hired based upon their leanings but upon their abilities to cause children to learn. At least, that is the constitutional design. New argument changes school reality into only serving and protecting the points of view of activism.
The election of school board members matters because schools reflect their school boards.