Ballotpedia Spoke To School Board Members Nationwide About Their Roles

Welcome to the Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, Brew. Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day: A version of this story appeared in Ballotpedia’s Hall Pass newsletter on September 3. Click here to sign up. In 2024 and 2025, Ballotpedia staff spoke with 100 school board members in 33 states about their motivations for running for elected office and their experiences managing their districts.

The goal of these wide-ranging, hour-long conversations was to learn more about the people who occupy these positions of community trust to ensure our coverage of their elections serves their communities. Our conversations included school board members from small and large districts, and those in rural and urban areas. Ballotpedia is the digital encyclopedia of American politics and elections, and Ballotpedia News is our hub for breaking news. Our goal is to inform people about politics by providing accurate and objective information about politics at all levels of government. We are firmly committed to neutrality in our content. As a nonprofit, our mission is to educate.

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Welcome to the Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, Brew. Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day: We spoke to school board members nationwide about their roles—here’s what they told us A version of this story appeared in Ballotpedia’s Hall Pass newsletter on September 3. Click here to sign up.

Middleton, Wisconsin--(Newsfile Corp. - September 4, 2025) - As schools nationwide welcome students back for the 2025-2026 academic year, Ballotpedia released findings from its "School Board Listening Tour", a study examining the experiences of America's school board... The initiative aimed to develop a deeper understanding of how school board members across the United States view their roles, responsibilities, and challenges. It is intended to serve as a resource for voters, researchers, policymakers, and others interested in the role of school boards in public education. Ballotpedia launched the project as part of its overall multi-year goal of covering all elections in the United States, including all local elections. Nationwide, school board members represent 13,500 public school districts and over 18% of the nation's 520,000 elected officials.

Conducted between 2024 and 2025, Ballotpedia's "School Board Listening Tour" represents the largest qualitative study of its kind. It involved 100 hour-long interviews with current and former board members across 33 states, representing the nation's urban, suburban, and rural districts. "School boards shape everything from curriculum choices to budget priorities in communities across America while taking on the responsibility of solving problems, addressing issues, and balancing the priorities of their friends, neighbors, and communities... "We sought to understand their lived experiences: the subjective perspectives, emotions, and insights of those representing the most direct connection between voters and education outcomes." The 43-page report details board member perspectives on conflict resolution, academic oversight, community engagement, and governance effectiveness. It includes statistical analysis, thematic findings, and direct quotes from interviews.

Download the full report here. In 2024 and 2025, Ballotpedia staff spoke with 100 school board members in 33 states about their motivations for running for elected office and their experiences managing their districts. The initiative aimed to develop a deeper understanding of how school board members across the United States view their roles, responsibilities, and challenges. Our conversations included school board members from small and large districts, and those in rural and urban areas. The resulting report details board member perspectives on conflict resolution, academic oversight, community engagement, and governance effectiveness. We’ve highlighted and summarized a few noteworthy findings and observations below.

🏫 School boards and their conflict styles 🏫 Conflict is inevitable in any governing body, and school boards are no exception. Roughly 62% of board members believe conflict usually leads to productive outcomes. We asked interviewees five questions about conflict on school boards, including: “Do school board coalitions tend to form along predictable lines (e.g. political party, gender, profession)?” This question revealed a near-even split. Forty-one percent said coalitions do tend to form predictably, typically along political lines or shared professional backgrounds. Another 42% emphasizing issue-based alliances or fluid dynamics.

The remaining 17% gave nuanced answers: coalitions might form in certain seasons (e.g. during elections or crises) but not persist. 🎒School boards and academic outcomes 🎒 42% of board members see their primary role as staying informed about academic outcomes, while 58% of the board members interviewed for this project did not list this... Across all district types, board members consistently described their role in academic outcomes as information seekers, accountability partners, and community liaisons—not instructional experts. 🍎The three flavors of school boards 🍎 School boards across the country can be broadly categorized into three distinct types. Each type reflects differences in governance and board member dynamics and the degree to which boards prioritize academic outcomes and community engagement.

1. Collaborative leadership boards function with high trust, shared vision, and well-defined roles, emphasizing strategy over micromanagement. (28%) 2. Coalition-driven conflict boards experience division along political or ideological lines. (38%) 3. Hands-off oversight boards are deferential toward superintendents, focusing primarily on broad policy decisions.

(34%) There’s so much more in the full report, and you can access it at the link below. We would also like to extend a big thank you to the Ballotpedia employees who interviewed school board members. This work would not have been possible without them! The full School Board Listening Tour Report can be found here: https://bit.ly/41EOeAV To help journalists contextualize coverage of school board elections, we spotlight research on who votes in these elections, the role of teachers unions and how new board members can influence school segregation, funding and... This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

You are free to republish this piece both online and in print, and we encourage you to do so with the embed code provided below. We only ask that you follow a few basic guidelines. by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource May 28, 2024 School board elections have grown increasingly politicized in recent years as conservative politicians and advocacy organizations push to restrict how public schools address issues related to race, gender and sexuality. A comprehensive resource – covering all 50 states – examines how state laws and regulations both grant and limit the authority of local school boards MIDDLETON, Wis., April 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Ballotpedia has completed its study examining local school board authority across all 50 states.

This resource is an exceptional tool for understanding the complex landscape of school governance in America and solves a critical information gap in this space. It represents a thorough analysis of how state laws and regulations both grant and limit the authority of local school boards nationwide. As debates about educational governance continue to intensify nationwide, Ballotpedia's school board authority research initiative provides an objective foundation for informed discussion about the proper balance of authority between state governments and local school... Ballotpedia provides clarity about the policy areas over which local school boards have decision-making power and how that authority is constrained by state or federal law. The report will be an essential reference for education policymakers, school board members, administrators, parent advocates, researchers, and citizens seeking to understand or influence local education policy. Ballotpedia's analysis includes articles exploring the authority the laws in each state give to local school boards, generally and over specific education policy issues such as:

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