The majority of school board elections in the US are technically nonpartisan, even though the right is making it more and more partisan, and it worries me, because I have trouble finding information about nonpartisan candidates (others, like for judge, mayor, etc. often have websites with information…school board candidates often don’t). So I don’t know how to choose.
How do you go about choosing who to vote for? I know the best way would be to attend school board meetings, or find out about the candidates another way (social media, talk to them directly, or maybe through friends/family), but that’s not always possible, because of time, or the candidates have a common name–try finding the particular Sally Jones or Tom Smith running for your local school board. But I don’t have a Facebook account or other social media page in which to search for them, so it’s a lot harder.
Do you attend board meetings to find out more? Look up candidates online? Choose someone randomly in the voting booth? Vote for someone you know, or a name you recognize? Or just abstain?
Our school district’s board members were appointed by City Council up until 2022. As president of our union local, I agitated for them to interview and appoint board members that were supported by school staff. When we were roundly ignored, we gave them enough of a hard time that they finally asked the state government to move our district to elected school board members. Then we organized a question-and-answer panel in cooperation with a local Facebook parent group and with the high school’s student government, and based on that panel and on questionnaires they filled out, we endorsed school board members.
Tonight I’m going to a budget meeting with them to try to persuade them to increase staff pay enough that we’ll stop hemorrhaging teachers and other staff.
I was going to ask this same question a few days ago. Not just about school board members, but about any non-partisan and/or unopposed candidates.
For the school board, the best I could do was poke around online. All I found was an entirely useless blurb from each of them about how they’re a ‘member of the community’ and they’ll ‘always do the right thing’. That stuff isn’t even worth putting into writing as far as I’m concerned. There were 4 people running, I checked their facebook pages and could only find one. Fortunately (for my decision making) he mentioned that people should vote for him and one of the other people running, and a few years early he had posted a MAGA reference of some kind. So I picked the other two.
That’s about as much research as I’m going to do on the school board. I’m not going to attend school board meetings or contact these people and ask them questions.
Similarly, all the judges that are non-partition and unopposed. I’m never sure what to do there either. I can’t find a sample ballot, but IIRC, there was something like 6 or 9 judges up for election. I don’t even know what to do with that. Honestly, they were all unopposed, I left it blank.
IMO, the critical thing is to distinguish candidates who have some connection with education (e,g, former teachers, principals, etc.) from those that don’t (e,g some random business owner who wants some say in how the schools are run). I always vote for the former over the latter. And, as said above, endorsements by the teachers.
The local facebok pages often have information from the candidates in my area. I look for right wing buzzwords (transparency, traditional values, parental input) and eliminate candidates based on that.
For electing judges, your local bar association no doubt publishes recommendations. In larger areas, there are probably also associations of LGB+, minority, etc. lawyers who make recommendations. I agree that if you aren’t informed, it’s probably best just to skip those races.
The Mrs. and I struggled with this very issue just last week. We were voting for not just Wisconsin Supreme Court judge (our candidate won, yay!) but also some local races, including a spot on the local school board.
There were two candidates. One had held the seat for over 3 decades. My wife had worked for the school system over 15 years ago and never heard anything bad about her. Challenger was a first time candidate, a science teacher in a nearby school district, but lived in our district.
We looked for candidate statements from them both, but found only a statement by the challenger stating he thought the board had been doing a great job and he wanted to participate in the process, so he was running. Local papers and sources came up dry otherwise. We contacted a neighbor who generally knew what was what behind the scenes in the community but she said she didn’t know anything about either candidate.
The Mrs. and I discussed it; while we tend to favor new blood and science teachers, etc. we didn’t know if the science teacher was one of the ‘creation science’ type guys or not. In our area this is a distinct possibility, as we’ve had that ilk teach in the local schools before. But lacking info beyond the challenger stating “gee, they’ve been doing a great job” we decided to vote for the incumbent.
The incumbent lost, ~ 800 to 200!
Post election querying of more local folks, we discovered the incumbent being described by a few folks as a ‘real basket case’ (whatever that means) and a ‘nut job.’
It can be real tough being an informed voter in these local races.
My town is transitioning from an entirely Mayor selected board to an elected board. I think the impetus for the transition was electing a Mayor who was an executive of the NJ State teacher’s union. I’m fine with candidates that teachers like, but there’s a limit.
We had a couple of elections and I personally knew 2 of the candidates, could have conversations with people I knew about other candidates, so I can feel comfortable with at least some of my votes. I’m at least vaguely dialed into the school system and the movers and shakers around town.
Here in Chicago, we have an entirely Mayor-selected board, and recently many people have wanted to get rid of that, in order to prevent the Mayor from pursuing an anti-teacher’s union agenda. Seems to me to miss the point; the same people who keep electing anti-union Mayors are going to be voting for the school board, so why would better results (for really any value of “better”) be expected?
Now that we have elected a former teacher’s union organizer as Mayor, it will be interesting to see how many people suddenly change their opinion on the desirability of electing the school board!
My wife is a retired teacher, so we usually follow the union’s recommendations. But otherwise I tend to look for a few things in the candidates’ background.
Have they served the school district in any previous capacity, even as a classroom volunteer?
Do they now or have they previously had kids in the school district?
Do they give any suggestions about what they want to do as a board member?
Is their big campaign theme “to run the schools like a business” (Correct answer, they aren’t a business, they’re schools.)
These are more or less the same things I look at for a city council candidate, another supposedly non-partisan office around here.
Ours are elected, and anyone who can legally run for office is eligible to do exactly that.
The one person I have known personally who did this later ran for, and won, a seat on the city council, but I can’t endorse her nowadays, knowing what I do now, because she’s a nutcase, to put it mildly. She never did anything untoward to me, but her personal life - egads! FWIW, it was sufficient for me to unfriend her on Facebook.
That’s good advice, but my question is how do you find out that information? Do you have contacts through your wife? I’m asking because I don’t have “inside” information (not illegal of course, but contacts in the system), I don’t have Facebook, and school board members don’t usually have campaign signs (around here anyway), so I don’t even know their names until I see the ballot. (Of course, I can use Ballotpedia or something, and I sometimes do). But even that can be limiting, and a chore to wade through the exact races I’m trying to find.
Most of the candidates around here at least put out flyers in addition to their online footprint. We also have a community newspaper that runs stories on these little elections and their candidates. Organizations like the League of Women Voters may be able to help, as well. Try checking with the local school district a couple of weeks before the election - they should at least be able to tell you who’s on the ballot.
I don’t really consider finding out who is going to appear on my ballot a chore - it’s my responsibility. For local races where candidates do is poor job putting out information about themselves, I’ll default to the people who have taken the time to put together a Facebook page or answer the ballotpedia questionnaires. If there are more questions, I’ll reach out to them directly. Any local candidate in a small election who isn’t willing to respond to a potential constituent’s emails and concerns simply isn’t worth voting for.
Do you have a precinct captain? Our precinct captain of our preferred party readily gave us info as to which candidates they thought were worthy of voting for, and which weren’t - with reasons given.
Also, the local League of Women Voters had the best evidence I was able to find just in terms of position statements, forums, etc.
A local politician we respect came to the door stumping for another candidate up for election. We invited her in and basically said, who SHOULD we vote for, and who SHOULDN’T we? Was great to get such clear opinion from someone we respected and trusted.
There are probably a lot of folks who vote for mayor but not for the downballot races like school board, and the vote for mayor is probably based on a lot of issues (so there might, for instance, be some folks who vote for him despite his anti-union stances, not because of them). Presumably, the hope is that the pro-union folks will be more motivated to vote for the downticket races (especially since the union could themself be organizing them).
Around here, the county publishes sample ballots. Put in your address to look up your district/precinct/etc., and it’ll show you a PDF of exactly what you’ll see in the voting booth. Then do a Google search for the candidates’ names, together with “teachers’ union endorsement” or “league of women voters” or whatever.
Newspapers will also usually publish endorsements for candidates in most of the races. Those are less reliable, because you don’t necessarily know the political lean of the editors, but they’ll usually give reasons for their endorsements, and you can usually judge pretty well from those.