America’s School Boards In 2026

0:06Most Americans know who the president is. Many people also know the names of their senators and representatives in Congress or their state lawmakers. But what about the people who run the local school board? School board members are typically elected by people in their community. That board then works together to set the goals and performance standards for public schools in the district. But make no mistake, school boards are not apolitical. Since 2021, school board races have been dominated by issues like trans students' access to bathrooms and sports, book bans, and diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

0:40But that tide is shifting. In politically mixed communities across the country, progressive candidates are winning more school board elections on seating conservative opponents who made gains during the Biden era. So what does a shift in local politics mean for students and parents? And what can school boards and the issues they prioritize tell us about the state of our democracy? I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. We tackle those questions and more after this short break.

1:12Let's get into the conversation by meeting our guests. Joining us from Los Angeles is Nadra Niddle. She's an education reporter at the 19th News. That's an independent nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, policy, and power. Nadra, it's great to have you. Thank you for having me. Also with us is Scott Levy. He currently serves on and has been elected four times to a local public school board in New York State. He's also served as president of a regional school boards association, and he's the author of Why School Boards Matter, Reclaiming the Heart of American Education and Democracy.

1:45Scott, welcome to the program. Jen, thank you so much for having me. Scott, tell us more about what a local school board does. Sure. So the primary responsibility of a board is one of governance. So that means hiring and managing the superintendent. It means setting policy, allocating budget, thinking about goals and broad strategy. What it's not is day-to-day administration at the school district because that's really the job of the administrative team to lead that charge. And it's very similar to other types of organizations, whether that be for-profit or non-profit entities that have boards.

2:18What happened, though, I think, is the shift, as you mentioned, from pre-COVID to post. Pre-COVID, a lot of people thought school boards were quite mundane. And I remember getting elected, walking in my town the day after, and somebody stopping me saying, oh, congratulations. I'm going to watch you when the meetings stream online because all school board meetings have to be transmitted publicly. And I was very excited to hear this because I didn't think very many people paid attention. And then he went on to say, well, look, I have trouble falling asleep and these meetings are really helpful in making me stay awake.

2:48And then, of course, 2020 comes. And then we see a series of these contentious battles being adjudicated in boardrooms. And a lot of them are centered around parents versus government control and curriculum and indoctrination, these tensions that happen in American education. And that's been true throughout American history. I think my last point I would make on this is that if you look at some of the language that was used during COVID, where parents were fearful of masking and vaccination mandates, and then you look at the early 20th century at some of the language in school board meetings where parents were very upset on smallpox vaccine mandates, they were almost essentially the same in terms of the feelings that parents had as they went to the microphone.

3:29And we also saw in the early 1800s this wave of pressure against school boards around teaching anything other than academics, such as moral instruction. And that was something that schools were starting to do. And we obviously see that tension continue to happen today. So politics and school boards, it's not a new phenomenon. Nadra, when you look at the politics of a given community, how does that typically drive how school board members prioritize the policies it enacts? Well, increasingly, the politics that are reflected on school boards don't necessarily reflect the politics of the community, which is one of the reasons we've seen more progressives be elected, because there were a lot of external forces outside PACs that were coming in and trying to influence school board policies without really connecting to the community.

4:27So now I'm being told that community members, whether they're in Texas or Colorado or places like Virginia, they really want to get back to focusing on the curriculum, on professional development for teachers, the fundamentals of education, and not so much on, you know, whether or not transgender students can play sports or critical race theory and these hot button issues that have dominated school boards over the past five years. years or so. Well, over the past few years, we've seen school boards in states such as Virginia, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania focus on those issues. But now many of the candidates who won on those issues are losing to more progressive candidates.

5:11An analysis from November 2025 by left-leaning grassroots organization Red, Wine, and Blue found that in school board races in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, 62 percent of candidates the group labeled extremist lost their elections. Meanwhile, 71 % of candidates that the group labeled common sense won their elections. But Scott, how do you think a school board serves as a proxy battleground for national political issues, even if they're not really an issue for that local community? So I think this has shifted over time for a variety of different reasons. But at this point, I think in the society that we live in, there's more of a connection between national politics and some of these local races.

5:54And the reason that I say that is for a variety of different reasons. One is, of course, just the proliferation of social media and how it just connects us all in a very different way. And that happens in local communities as well. You saw historically the focus in many communities around school district news coming from professional journalists that were writing in newspapers. That was the primary mechanism to get school district news out to the community. And we know what's happened to local newspapers across the country is a pretty precipitous decline of the number of reporters and even the number of newspapers that exist.

6:30And there's been research on this around local politics and the demise of local newspapers. And it oftentimes has an effect of reducing sort of the quality of the competitiveness of the races and even the number of people who run in some of these local communities. So there is a convergence. At the same time, you do have to look at every race differently. And I think that in each community, You have a set of unique dynamics. And the last point I would make on this, which I think is an important one, is that turnout at school board elections is oftentimes very, very low. Often in the realm of around 10 percent.

7:05Could be, you know, 5 to 15 percent in that band. And what that means is that you can have a group of voters, whether that be a special interest group, whether that be adults who don't have kids in the school, or it could be parents. That could sway the election depending on who it is that's actually coming out to vote. Well, across the country, school board candidates backed by the right-wing group Moms for Liberty won big in 2021 and 2022. But, Nandar, you report that this past November, most candidates endorsed by that group lost to their more progressive counterparts. counterparts. What does this illustrate to you about how voters' priorities are shifting?

7:42Yeah, I think it suggests, again, that the public is not so much interested in these controversial issues that may or may not have any real impact on their lives. And so I think that's one of the reasons Moms for Liberty isn't seeing the success that it saw maybe five years ago at the start of the pandemic. And one of the things that propelled some of those candidates to office back then were things like mask mandates, as well as critical race theory and issues like that. But I think now, as the economy is struggling, people are not so much focused on those sorts of issues. They really just want to see their children get the best education they can.

8:28And they're not so much interested in divisive issues. We asked you what issues your local school board is focusing on, and here's what one of you shared. I am a teacher in a county in Florida where the Moms for Liberty have won the past school board's elections and have created so many restrictions around students' access to books that is actually severely hindering our reading development in schools. There is an election coming up where we're hoping to vote out one of the Moms for Liberty members, but essentially this woman is holding our school board hostage even though she homeschools her kids and doesn't have a student within the school system.

9:26Thanks for that message. Now, last school year, Florida was the state with the highest rate of book bans at more than 2 ,300. That's according to Penn America, a free expression advocacy organization that tracks book bans across the country. We also heard from Becky who emails, I live in a small New Hampshire town and school board elections are a big deal. What bothers me most is when individuals who have opted for homeschooling for their own children decide to run for school board. Is this happening in other parts of the country? Scott, what can you tell us? Are we seeing people or an increase of people who don't have children in the public school system perhaps are choosing to homeschool running for these seats?

10:04So absolutely. And what's very interesting is a case study of the town that I grew up in and the schools that I was in when I was a kid, which is in a suburban area of New York City, where you actually have the majority of this school board now in 2026 being comprised of parents who do not send their kid to public school. And so as you can imagine, that's created a lot of tension in that community because on the one hand, the public school parents want the school board to be focused on public school issues and then point fingers at the school board and are concerned that they're not. And so it's created a lot of divide in the community.

10:46And when you think about it, some of the trends that we see in education around homeschooling, around school choice could lead to more and more circumstances where you have this dynamic. And at the end of the day, anybody who is a taxpayer and resides in that community can certainly run for school board, and that's their right. On the other hand, obviously, parents of kids that are in public school think certainly about how that board member is going to be a trustee for their child in that system. And so it certainly creates tension in certain places. Well, Nadra, in that voicemail, the teacher also mentioned Moms for Liberty.

11:24They back the school board member who doesn't have a child in the school district. Why might a political organization choose a candidate like that? Well, I think what we're seeing in this age is candidates, whether they're from Moms for Liberty or other extremist groups, trying to influence local and statewide politics. Some of them have agendas, whether it is things like book banning, whether it's trying to blur the lines between church and state in schools. And so even if their kids are homeschooled or attend religious schools, they have a vested interest in trying to get their conservative values into the public school system.

12:10And there's some concern that one of the reasons this is happening is because of the push to privatize education through vouchers as well. So, Scott, I'm curious whether there are any other points in history when we've seen this type of focus on school boards, really seeing them be politicized in a way where people are specifically running for seats on those school boards, perhaps as a stepping stone to other political office or as a way of entrenching certain beliefs in that community. Right. The best example I think that comes to mind is in the late 1800s into the very early 1900s during the progressive era in America where there was a lot of focus on how you had these bodies that were overseeing the schools.

13:02And oftentimes there was this connection between these bodies and corruption or people that were elected into these positions and then use the positions to try to get jobs through cronyism for people that they knew in their network. And there were a lot of steps that were put in place to try to eradicate it. For example, that was the point in American history when a lot of school board elections were moved from the time when other elections took place in our democracy up and down the ballot to off-cycle elections. There was also a push to separate out school boards, races, not having the Republican and Democrat label like you did in other races.

13:43There are some states that still have that label and one that recently added the label. But for the most part, most states in our country, you still have school board members running on a nonpartisan basis. So there were a lot of structural elements put in place. There was also a migration from the ward-based system where you would vote for a school board member from your neighborhood to voting for at-large candidates that represented the entire district with the hope that they would be more forward-thinking around the good of the district overall. And that still is a mix in terms of how school board members get elected today.

14:15There are some places that still have ward-based systems, but there was a dramatic shift in that early 1900s period. Well, we got this email from Rebecca who says, we recently moved to Western Pennsylvania from North Texas where the school boards were becoming increasingly conservative and influenced by Moms for Liberty. This was a concern for our family and one of the main reasons we moved. It is extremely important to us that our kids receive an education that is based in facts and history, not conservative ideologies. Scott, how do school board decisions like what curriculum students are taught or what books they can read affect educational outcomes?

14:51So, they're critically important, but one thing that I would point out that I think is an increasing trend over the past few decades, but it's accelerated it, and I don't think it's focused on enough, is we think about issues that divide us left versus right. And in education, there are many, and we've seen those play out in boardrooms. We've seen those play out on social media. We've seen those play out in traditional media. But at the end of the day, there is actually an alignment in red and blue states that looks quite similar, which is that at the state level, there's much more power that is being exerted on local districts.

15:27And so what I mean by that is you could be sitting in Virginia or Texas or New York or California, and you might be looking at your local school board and wondering where they're going to lead the district. But at the end of the day, there's an increasing number of regulatory and statutory laws and regulation that are being put forth by these respective states around education in a way that micromanages local districts very different than in the past. And what's ironic is that you might look at a state like Tennessee and Washington, and those are two opposite ends of the spectrum from a political standpoint.

16:00One state might mandate exactly what the other state bans, but they're both making these decisions, whether it's around DEI training or certain aspects of curriculum at the state level rather than at the local level. And historically, it used to be that states would be much higher level in their focus. And we heard from Carolyn in Northern Virginia who emails, many school boards do not require their members to have any sort of qualifications or experience in education. so we end up with representatives who do not have degrees in education and have not worked in our schools. It often ends up being just a stepping stone for people who want to advance their political careers and becomes a politically focused board.

16:40School board should be about doing what's best for students, and people with educational experience truly understand that. We have to take a quick break, but we'll have more in just a moment.

16:53Getting back now to our conversation, and let's bring in a new voice. Joining us from Texas is Felicia Martin. She's the president and executive director of the Texas Freedom Network. That's a nonpartisan organization advocating for religious freedom, civil liberties, and public education. Felicia, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So the Cypress-Ferbanks Independent School District is one of the largest in Texas. It has roughly 118 ,000 students. In November, three educators won seats on that school board, which since 2023 had a six-to-one conservative majority. The conservative board had drawn backlash in the district for aggressive book bans, policies targeting LGBTQ plus students, and deleting 13 middle school textbook chapters on topics like vaccines, diversity, and climate change.

17:39Now, the newly elected educators, Leslie Gilmart, Cleveland Ling Jr., and Kendra Camarena, were endorsed by your organization, Felicia. What were the key issues that set them apart from their opponents in this race? well we as you mentioned over the past several years the school board was controlled by a far right majority backed by these deep pocketed political groups you know they were banning books gutting library positions you know in implementing these discriminatory policies and so what we saw in these three candidates they were three long-time educators and they ran on a simple powerful message which was public school should be safe welcoming places where every student can learn and thrive.

18:21And so we were really proud to have endorsed them and play a role in their winning back their board because let's be clear, the election was truly about a community-driven effort. It wasn't just TFN who endorsed this slate of progressive candidates. It was, you know, parents, educators, voters who showed up and said that every child deserves to have a great education in a school that's welcoming and supportive of them. Your organization is nonpartisan. So what are you looking for in candidates you choose to support? Well, we're looking for candidates who are really trying to push against these far-right extremist people who are coming into the district to push these far-right ideas.

19:06So we're looking for candidates who are thinking about teaching the truth, who push against the anxieties that I think the far-right tries to play on when it comes to our communities. So we want them to be thinking about how they can stand up to some of these things that Scott actually mentioned that are being implemented at the state level. Scott, this makes me curious about how we've seen money enter school board races in ways that we haven't perhaps seen before. Is it more expensive to run as a school board member now? It's highly dependent on where you live and just the dynamics in your community and whether or not outside groups focus on your community as a place where they potentially want to invest in the campaign process.

19:51So over time, there is a shift to see more money coming in from outside groups. Now, there's always been some money in school board races. Oftentimes, that could be grassroots money. Sometimes that's money from special interest groups, particularly unions that employ workers in school districts. Obviously, they oftentimes might have an interest in who's governing the schools. And so unions have been very influential in school board elections. There's been a lot of research done on that. But of late, you've seen groups on the right for sure and also on the left start to fund school board campaigns.

20:28And so there is an increase in the amount of outside money coming in. Having said that, if you looked at a national sample and there's not a lot of great numbers out there, but at least in the surveys that I've seen, the average school board race is a very low economic proposition in terms of how much money are in these races. And absent some of the large cities and places that have been more flashpoints in the culture wars, you'll see a lot of places where candidates may spend hundreds, if not a few thousand dollars, not to the level where you see state races or certainly federal races. Well, several of the conservative candidates in the Cyprus Fairbank School Board race were backed by a conservative Christian super PAC, Patriot Mobile Action.

21:07Nadra, what can you tell us about that organization? Well, it's an organization that prioritizes getting Christian values taught in public schools. And so that's a trend that we're seeing throughout Texas and really across the country as more states try to blur those lines between church and state. Felicia, tell us about who makes up your organization, the Texas Freedom Network. Well, we're comprised of community advocates, people who are pro-education, who really understand and want to promote the separation of church and state. You know, our organization was founded at the State Board of Education by Cecile Richards, who, after her mom, Ann Richards, was not reelected in Texas, sat in on a school board meeting and saw the intersection of curriculum and large money, right?

22:00That was, back then, in 1995, the Christian right. So people were, in that time, very concerned about religious freedom and the teaching of the truth of evolution. And so now we're back to where we were in 1995, where the State Board of Education is starting to think about social studies curriculum. And so now we're seeing people come back into the Texas Freedom Network movement, which is parents, students, educators, people who are really trying to push against this trend of not teaching the truth, both that are in our higher education institutions, but definitely in our PK through 12. Well, school boards in Texas and in most school districts around the country, they're designed to be nonpartisan.

22:44Felicia, how does the politicization of school boards affect schools and the students they serve? Well, I mean, obviously, school boards sit at the intersection of community values and public institutions. So, you know, when school boards function well, they reflect community needs and protect educational access. But when they're captured by ideological agendas, the impact is really immediate and personal. And so it affects what students learn. It affects which books are available to them. So, yeah, the politicization of education has a direct impact on your communities because you have really a right versus left battle in some cases, but a top versus the bottom in some where you have this large money really influencing what happens and what gets implemented at the local level.

23:31We got this email from Christina who writes, I live in a diverse school district in North Carolina where the Board of Education was taken over by Moms for Liberty and MAGA candidates in 2022. They have banned books, banned all DEI professional development, crippled Title IX, banned LGBTQ expression, banned sex ed as it was being delivered, and more. The problem is that we are an at-large district and we've had no members of color for many years, despite half of our school community being families of color. It makes more public school moderate families feel as if they have no representation. Scott, there's the school board, but then there are the students and the families that school board serves.

24:14What role do community members, parents, even students have in really holding these boards accountable, but also trying to shape the policies that affect what happens inside schools? So the first point, and I think to that particular comment that was just made, there's no doubt that there's been research that shines a light on the fact that school boards don't always represent perfectly the underlying community of students that go to that particular district and that are enrolled in the district. There could be a mismatch. And so the system doesn't always necessarily produce boards that are mirrors of the student community.

24:56But I think that we have to keep a bunch of things in mind. The first is that all school district business needs to be done in the light of day with full transparency. So any decision that a board makes, absent some very narrow circumstances around individual disciplinary matters or lawsuits, but for everything else, it needs to be done in the public eye. And the public has the right to come to those school board meetings and speak their mind during public comment period. And then board members sit there and listen. And that's, I think, an important part of the process. We see a lot of intense conflict happening in certain school boardrooms.

25:29There's no doubt that there have been lots of examples of that in just about every state. But there's been research done recently where they looked at 100 ,000 hours of school board videos. It was done by researchers at the University of Houston at Georgetown and at Michigan. And what they found was that though the amount of conflict has risen, intense conflict, the conflict that we see in YouTube videos that might get passed to millions of viewers, that's concentrated in a very small number of districts. So what we mostly see is civil discourse, truly civil discourse happening in those boardrooms.

26:02And so everybody does have a voice, even if they're not able to elect the member that they want to elect. Here's a message we got from Lise. I am in Elgin, Minnesota. We were a relatively progressive little small town. We've got three towns in our school district. And what I've noticed is manipulation from higher up to stack the school boards with ultra-conservative people. We ended up with people who don't even have children in our schools on the school board. And my understanding is that a lot of this was manipulated by our U.S. congressmen in the district. and they ran three people because they knew if they got the three ultra-conservatives on, they could run the votes within the school board.