Local educational agency trustees have always had to navigate conflicting opinions over school budgets, curriculum and more, but as clashes over pandemic-related school closures; masking and vaccine policies; programs supporting diversity, equity and inclusion and other topic went viral online, school board meetings throughout the country became more contentious, sometimes to the detriment of trustees’ well-being.
According to a new report published June 5 by the Brookings Institution, A survey of America’s school board members, “media reports across the country showed boards struggling not only with the aftermath of COVID-19 but a host of hot-button issues involving race, gender, and sexuality. School boards became major battlegrounds for America’s culture wars. In this context, we risk losing sight of the people who serve on these boards: the individuals who, in most cases, run for local offices to do work that can be difficult and thankless.”
The survey, drawn from a nationally representative sample of about 1,000 board members, asked trustees about their experiences running for and serving in office, as well as how they see their schools and the desires of their communities.
“We have some 13,000 odd school wards across the country that oversee the nation’s public school districts. They play important roles in governing school systems. They hire superintendents, select curriculum, set district policies, approved budgets and communicate with the public, among other duties,” Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy, said during a June 8 webinar about the report’s findings. “From the survey, you get a portrait of board members who are wearying of the growing influence of partisan politics and fatigued by the contentiousness of the period, but also committed to continuing to serve their communities.”
(This study is a companion report to Local control, national conflict: School boards in the COVID 19 and cultural war era, which analyzes what happened during the turbulent first half of the 2020s through various means, including a trustee surveys. Read a recap of that report here.)
Key findings
Researchers outlined key takeaways, including those showing that:
- Conflict over COVID-19 and culture-war issues have affected school boards across the country and in all types of communities, straining relationships and sometimes leaving lasting scars on many school boards. According to the report, many — though not most — school board members say the pandemic has negatively affected their board’s ability to govern.
- Trustees are concerned about the influence of partisan politics, and the vast majority strongly oppose having school board candidates’ party affiliations appear on the ballot.
- Board members report gaps between what their communities generally want them to prioritize and what the most vocal members of their community want them to prioritize. For example, board members’ own priorities generally match what they believe their communities want them to prioritize, such as school safety and academic performance. “When asked about the most vocal members of their communities, board members say these individuals also prioritize safety — but are more likely than other community members to emphasize issues related to race, gender and sexuality,” the report states.
- Board members also see gaps between what their boards spend the most time on (e.g. financial planning and facilities) and what they would like their boards to prioritize.
- Board members are older, wealthier, more likely to be female and more highly educated than the general adult population, but the average public school student is represented by a board that is racially and ethnically representative of U.S. adults.
