School boards, especially elected ones, are the bedrock of our democracy, yet they’re critically overlooked and underserved. These vital, community-led institutions, designed to give citizens a direct say in local education, are essential for healthy communities.
My colleague, Dr. Julie Corbett from Corbett Education Consulting and a former school board member says we are going to have to make some changes to ensure that school boards are able to act as pillars of democracy.
From Dr. Julie Corbett:
“Despite the immense value of school boards, their elections suffer from abysmally low turnout, their mostly volunteer members lack sufficient research-based training, and members face increasing threats to their personal security. If we want a truly representative and functional democracy we must change this with an investment of time and money.
Bedrock Under Strain
“As former school board member, Dr. Kim Bridges, aptly states in a forthcoming podcast, ‘School boards are our most proximate democracies.’ Since their inception in Massachusetts 1647 and formalization in 1826, school boards have been a community-led approach to governing education, distinct from other municipal offices. Many school board members don’t plan on running for office, and often run and serve in an effort to build solutions for other families that they experienced – such as navigating the often-daunting special education system.
“While we strive to keep schools ‘apolitical,’ education is inherently political. School boards, whether partisan or nonpartisan, are also frequently caught in the clash of political ideologies and shifting state and national policies.
“By design, school boards offer one of the most direct forms of democratic participation, allowing citizens to directly influence their children’s education and the allocation of local resources. People tend to pay more attention to local boards when ‘kitchen table issues’ directly impact ‘your kids.’
“These boards and their nearly 83,000 members are meant to be representative, yet despite the increasing racial diversity of students, school board members remain overwhelmingly white. Moreover, voters in school board races tend to be older, whiter, and often don’t have children in the school system. In other words, many members and voters lack direct connections to students and their needs.”
Overcoming Challenges
“While school boards have been around for centuries, there has been an evolution at both the state and national levels which impacts the work and roles of the board. With an increasing emphasis on local control and decision-making, the role of the school board is increasingly important. Today, schools are interconnected systems, often linking students and families to wraparound services.
“There is a critical need for researchers and practitioners to collaborate. As Dr. Carrie Sampson of ASU observes, ‘The school board research space is growing but remains small. Researchers are spread across the country and in various fields from education to political science and public affairs…. We aren’t seeing the direct connections between research and practice that should be there to truly inform each other and improve the field.’
“Organizations are increasingly recognizing the need to support representative, effective, and inclusive school boards. Strategies include broader civic engagement efforts around how local government works, pipeline training programs, and supports for sitting school board members. Efforts like ‘Vote at 16’ also directly impact local races, including school boards.”
An Imperative for Collaboration
“Despite this growing attention, supporting school boards remains a challenging and largely unaddressed issue. The organizations seeking to support candidates and train board members lack cohesion, are underfunded, and often battling for the same dollars. By working together—fostering collective action to ensure boards are representative, leveraging each other’s strengths to improve this complex system, and connecting research to practice—we can build a community-focused school board ecosystem that prioritizes students and families. As a recent publication noted, ‘Collective social innovators aim for large-scale change by staying focused on a shared purpose while navigating diverse perspectives.’
“These volunteer board members nationwide cannot do this work alone. They, and the students they represent, deserve the collective support of diverse entities. They need greater involvement from the people they represent, and better support for the organizations that help them to be their best.”