Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #127

By

Samuel Wonacott

Welcome to Hall Pass, a newsletter written to keep you plugged into the conversations driving  school board governance, the politics surrounding it, and education policy. 

In today’s edition, you’ll find:

  • On the issues: The debate over school metal detectors 
  • School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
  • South Carolina Supreme Court rules education savings account program violates state constitution
  • Extracurricular: education news and numbers from around the web
  • Candidate Connection survey

Reply to this email to share reactions or story ideas!

On the issues: The debate over school metal detectors

In this section, we curate reporting, analysis, and commentary on the issues school board members deliberate when they set out to offer the best education possible in their district. Missed an issue? Click here to see the previous education debates we’ve covered.

Should schools install metal detectors to prevent gun violence?

We previously looked at the debate over requiring armed guards in schools. 

Jason Turner argues that schools should have security measures comparable to courthouses and other public buildings. Turner says metal detectors would help protect students, deter potential shooters, and make schools more affordably safer. He also says all schools should have at least two police officers on duty.

Erika Felix writes that security measures like metal detectors and armed staff hurt mental health and increase the risk of violence. Felix says schools should focus on offering mental health resources and building stronger relationships with students and the community.

Put Metal Detectors In Schools | Jason Turner, The Chattanoogan

“[W]e should have metal detectors in schools. We’ve seen sufficient reason as to why. We can afford it. Not as glamorous as a new baseball stadium but way more valuable to the residents of Hamilton county. If we guarded schools like we guard courthouses, banks and casinos, they wouldn’t be such easy targets. I also believe we should have two officers at every school. It should be a rotation. Seasoned street officers assigned one day a week at a school. These officers have split second reaction time. They would appreciate the break, I would imagine.”

We cannot sacrifice normalcy in the effort to prevent school shootings | Erika Felix, The Hill

“As a psychologist who has responded to mass shootings and researched their effects, there are mental health consequences to some of our efforts at school security. For example, installing metal detectors in schools was largely ineffective for safety and made students feel less safe at their schools. This kind of overreach can produce dystopian environments and arguably increases the risk of violence for some people. … We all want to prevent rather than react to school shootings. The best options are supporting students’ mental health, creating healthy relationships and building the bonds of community.”

School board update: filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications

This year, Ballotpedia will cover elections for over 11,000 school board seats across more than 30 states. We’re expanding our coverage each year with our eye on the country’s more 80,000 school board seats.  

Upcoming school board elections

Alaska

On Oct. 1, Ballotpedia will cover recall elections against Emil Mackey and Deedie Sorensen, members of the Juneau Borough School District school board. Sorensen is the president of the board, while Mackey is the vice president. 

So far this year, 10 school board recall efforts have gone to the ballot—voters recalled six members and rejected efforts to remove four. In even-numbered years between 2014 and 2022, an average of 16 school board members were in recall efforts that made it to the ballot. Click here to listen to our recent On the Ballot podcast breaking down this year’s state and local recall efforts. 

The recall effort started after the district’s finance consultant informed the board in early 2024 that the district faced a $9.5 million budget shortfall (with nearly $2 million carried over from the previous fiscal year). In the spring of 2023, the board unanimously approved the district’s budget through June 30, 2024. After the budget shortfall was discovered, the board approved a modified budget, which included a $4 million interest-free loan from the city of Juneau.

The recall campaign submitted petitions to recall Mackey and Sorensen, citing them for their “failure to understand the FY24 budget and accounting errors resulting in $7.9M deficit and taxpayer loan from CBJ [City and Borough of Alaska]”. 

Both board members said they voted to approve a budget in the spring of 2023 based on information the district’s administration and financial staff gave them. Sorensen said: “While people keep acting as though maybe we should have hired someone to do a deep dive into our budget, that’s exactly what we did. We gave the superintendent in, I believe it was November, the authority to find someone who could basically forensically crawl through our budget after the audit and figure out what was going on.”

Click here to learn more about school board recall efforts. Click here to read our 2024 mid-year recall report.

South Carolina Supreme Court rules education savings account program violates state constitution 


On Sept. 11, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled 3-2 that the state’s Education Scholarship Trust Fund Program violates the state constitution’s prohibition on using taxpayer dollars to benefit private or religious schools. The education savings account (ESA) program is designed to provide up to $6,000 for approved educational expenses to students from low-income households. Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed the Education Scholarship Trust Fund Act (SB 39) establishing the program in 2023. 

The ruling preserves portions of the program that permit students to use the accounts for public school expenses, including costs related to extracurricular activities.

Political context

South Carolina has a Republican trifecta, meaning that Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office. The state House voted 74-36 to pass SB 39, while the state Senate did so in a 28-15 vote. 

Understanding ESA programs

ESA programs are a form of private school choice allowing qualified families to use taxpayer funding for educational expenses outside of the public school system, such as private school tuition or homeschooling. Other private school choice policies include vouchers and education tax credits. Including South Carolina, 17 states have enacted ESA programs since 2011, when Arizona first did so. In seven of those states, all or nearly all students are eligible to participate. 

Of the seven states with universal or near-universal ESA programs, all but one—North Carolina—has a Republican trifecta. North Carolina has a divided government. Gov. Roy Cooper (D) allowed the state’s Education Student Accounts (ESA+) program to become law without his signature in September 2023. 

Legal challenge

A group of teachers, parents, and education advocacy organizations, including the South Carolina Education Association and the South Carolina NAACP, sued the state in October 2023. The plaintiffs alleged the program violated Article XI, Section 4 of the state constitution, which prohibits taxpayer money from being used “for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.” 

South Carolina residents approved that amendment 57% to 43% in 1972. 

Including South Carolina, 34 states have language in their state constitutions that prohibits public funding for schools or educational institutions run by religious organizations. These amendments are informally known as Blaine Amendments, and are named after Rep. James Gillespie Blaine (R) of Maine, the minority leader in the U.S. House during the 1870s. Blaine proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have prohibited public funding for religious schools or educational institutions. 

The court’s decision

The South Carolina Supreme Court justices were divided on whether the ESA program provided a direct benefit to private schools. 

Writing for the majority, South Carolina Justice D. Garrison Hill agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument, stating: “After we clear away the window dressing, we can see the Act funnels public funds to the direct benefit of private schools. This is what our constitution forbids. We conclude Petitioners have carried their burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt the portion of the Act that allows tuition payments from public funds for the direct benefit of private educational institutions violates Article XI, Section 4.”

In his dissent, Chief Justice John Kittredge argued that private schools only indirectly benefit from the program, because families ultimately decide how to spend the money: “While public funds are involved, the funds do not flow directly from the State Treasury to private schools…the ESTF [Education Scholarship Trust Fund] program puts students and their parents in the driver’s seat, for they alone choose where to spend the allotted funds.”

South Carolina is one of two states that use legislative elections to select state supreme court judges. Under this selection method, the South Carolina Judicial Merit Selection Commission submits a list of three names to the South Carolina General Assembly, which then votes on a candidate. 

Republicans have controlled both chambers of the General Assembly since 2003.

This method is unique among judicial selection types in that neither the governor (via appointment powers) nor the public (via direct elections) plays a role.

Broader legal and political context

The South Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling is part of a larger national debate over the use of taxpayer funding for private—and particularly private religious—educational expenses. These disagreements have played out in legislatures and state and federal courts. 

According to Scotusblog’s Amy Howe, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided “a series of cases in recent years in which the court has sided with parents and religious institutions challenging state policies that barred them from receiving education-related funds that were available for secular, but not religious, recipients.”

Those cases are summarized below:

  • Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017): The court ruled 7-2 that the Missouri Department of Natural Resources violated Trinity Lutheran Church’s First Amendment rights when it denied the church’s application for a grant to resurface its daycare center’s playground. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources cited a provision of the Missouri Constitution prohibiting public money from being used in support of a church. 
  • Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020): In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that Montana could not exclude religiously-affiliated private schools from participating in a tax-credit scholarship program. The majority ruled that Article X, Section 6 of the Montana Constitution, which prohibited the legislature from directing taxpayer money to religious private schools, violated the U.S. Constitution’s free exercise clause. 
  • Carson v. Makin (2022): The court ruled 6-3 in that a Maine K-12 tuition-assistance program could not exclude religious schools from participating. 

State supreme courts have issued conflicting rulings on private school choice programs. In 2022, for example, state supreme court justices in West Virginia and Tennessee upheld private school choice programs. That same year, the justices on Kentucky’s highest court struck down the state’s tax-credit scholarship program. 

More recently, on June 25, 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked the opening of what would have been the nation’s first religious charter school. The court ruled 7-1 the statewide virtual school, which the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City established, violated state laws prohibiting taxpayer funding from going to religious organizations and requiring that public schools be nonsectarian.  

Click here to read more about private school choice programs.

Extracurricular: education news from around the web

This section contains links to recent education-related articles from around the internet. If you know of a story we should be reading, reply to this email to share it with us! 

Take our Candidate Connection survey to reach voters in your district

Today, we’re looking at survey responses from the two candidates in the Nov. 5 general election for Granite School District Precinct II in Utah. Incumbent Clarke B. Nelson and Kevin Korous are running. 

Nelson was first elected in 2020. 

Granite School District is the third-largest in Utah, with an estimated student population of 61,000 students. The district encompasses parts of Salt Lake County. Three seats on the board are up for election this year. Primaries were held in June. 

Here’s how Nelson answered the question, “What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?”

“I am passionate about public education, and engaging with community stakeholders to provide each student the best opportunity to succeed. For example:

  • 1) Early literacy—as a district, we must prioritize early literacy through increased investment at the K-3 level. I support all-day kindergarten as one means, however, additional prioritization in grades K-3 will save investment in remediation at later ages. “Learn to read, then read to learn.”
  • 2) Cell phones in our schools—I was instrumental in passing the new Granite cell phone policy that prohibits students’ use of cell phones in our classrooms. I am encouraged by early feedback on the policy from our teachers and will work hard to maintain and enforce this policy going forward.”

Click here to read the rest of Nelson’s responses. 

Here’s how Korous answered the question, “What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?”

“Public Education, Health, Equity”

Click here to read the rest of Korous’ responses. 

If you’re a school board candidate or incumbent, click here to take the survey. If you’re not running for school board, but there is an election in your community this year, share the link with the candidates and urge them to take the survey!

In the 2022 election cycle, 6,087 candidates completed the survey. 

The survey contains more than 30 questions, and you can choose the ones you feel will best represent your views to voters. If you complete the survey, a box with your answers will display on your Ballotpedia profile. Your responses will also appear in our sample ballot.