The latest attempts for making school board races partisan affairs come as education has been thrust into the spotlight amid the pandemic and the high profile victory of Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, who campaigned on a promise to give parents more say in their kids’ education. It also comes as other crucial battleground issues are bubbling up in education, including classroom lessons on history and race — a subject that has emerged as a boogeyman for GOP policymakers in numerous states who are condemning efforts to teach young people about the nation’s history of discrimination.
With all of these policies converging, there have been clear disconnects among state and local leaders, and even parents, over how to educate their children. Republicans are openly embracing parental rights as a key factor shaping policy in D.C. and many statehouses — seen in proposals to strengthen protections for parents against schools.
“There’s a major underestimation nationwide, even on the political side, that these parents are really frustrated,” said Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota County school board member who is also the wife of the Florida GOP vice chair.
New momentum
These divides have brought new energy to a long-running debate on the role of overt partisanship in school board campaigns, as prominent conservative groups have called this year for major shifts in the timing of board elections and for voters to see party labels on their school board ballots.
“Including party labels in school board elections seems like a commonsense reform that would give voters more information, while also potentially increasing participation and enhancing local accountability,” wrote Aaron Churchill of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute in August. “But such a change would be an uphill battle.”
The debate is no longer theoretical in Tennessee, which, like most states, once prohibited expressly partisan school board election. Tennessee’s law, signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee in November, allows local political parties to put forward candidates that are openly Republican, Democrat or Independent.
Tennessee’s law is softer than lawmakers’ original pitch to require partisan school board elections in the state. Yet it has set off a flurry of activity by county politicians who are moving to enact the law and notable divides among local school boards that disagree with it.
“This is not something that has been done in Tennessee. I don’t think it’s healthy, and I think that’s a rather universal thought among the school boards in Tennessee,” Jim Welch, president of the Kingsport Board of Education, said last month as members approved a resolution that said partisan elections could “create division among the board and shift the focus away from the needs of the students.”
