Publications and Press

Three years ago, Jasmin Shaheed-Young formed an Indianapolis nonprofit called Rise Indy that was focused on promoting educational equity. She knew that having a school board that looked like the community would be important to her cause, but there was a lot of confusion in the community around what school board members’ roles in education are.

“Long gone are the days when school board members held onto political power. Nearly three-fourths of board members don’t plan to run for reelection after their current term, new research shows. A ‘great resignation’ of school board members, including some who have made strides in furthering student equity, will leave hundreds of school board seats up for grabs in the coming years, according to nationally representative research by School Board Partners, a national nonprofit group that trains new school board members.”

Corrected: The initial headline for this article incorrectly reported the share of school board members who did not plan to run again. The correct amount is nearly two-thirds. As school board races become more politicized amid the national movement to curtail lessons on race, racism, and LGBTQ issues, only 38 percent of current board members said, in a new survey, that they plan to run for reelection.

A report by School Board Partners also finds just 30% of current school board members are people of color, compared to 54% of public school students.

Only 38 percent of school board members plan to run for reelection, according to a new survey from School Board Partners, a group with the goal of training 2,500 new school board members over 10 years. — “The ‘Great Resignation’ is coming to a school board near you,” said Ethan Ashley, co-founder of School Board Partners and a school board member in New Orleans. His group believes this exodus “presents an opportunity to recruit and train new, more diverse leaders,” but Ashley added that it also lends itself to challenges where more extreme right-wing school board members can ultimately step up and run and get elected. — Additionally, about 64 percent of surveyed school board members were white, the survey found, compared with a student enrollment that is only 46 percent white. “The reality is that our boards struggled to respond to racial issues, achievement gaps and beyond, and that’s really because there’s a lack of representation,” Ashley said. Only 37 percent of white board members, compared to 74 percent of members of color, agree it is important that the racial and ethnic composition of the board mirror the community it serves.

Last month, schools across the country celebrated Earth Day, many bringing children and families together to clean parks and plant trees. That’s excellent, but it’s time to talk about the other 364 days of the year. We’re not minimizing what happened on that one day. Trees are desperately needed on our hot, blacktop-covered school playgrounds, and parks that welcome children and families matter deeply.