Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #136

By

Ballotpedia staff

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: Perspectives on how Linda McMahon could shape the Department of Education 
  • School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
  • Federal judge temporarily sides with Massachusetts school officials in AI academic dishonesty case
  • 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: Perspectives on how Linda McMahon could shape the Department of Education

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.

On Nov. 19, President-elect Donald Trump (R) announced that he intended to nominate Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education. McMahon served as the 25th Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from 2017 to 2019, during Trump’s first term. Before that, she was the president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). 

Jeremiah Poff writes McMahon can reverse liberal priorities and promote a new agenda focused on parents’ rights. Poff says McMahon needs to balance reducing bureaucratic burdens imposed on K-12 schools through grants, supporting school choice programs, and setting curriculum standards that prohibit politically driven instruction. Poff says McMahon could be the most effective secretary in the department’s history if she accomplishes those goals.

Jonathan Zimmerman writes McMahon’s department will have to contend with a contradictory policy platform, which will limit her effectiveness. Zimmerman says the goal of giving power back to local governments and parents is incompatible with removing certain books from classrooms and creating curricular requirements around the teaching of race and gender. He says McMahon’s agenda will be unpopular and unsuccessful.

Linda McMahon has a big job ahead of her | Jeremiah Poff, Washington Examiner

“In her new position, McMahon will be charged with undoing four years of reckless liberal policymaking and advancing a new policymaking agenda that prioritizes student success and parental rights, while freeing the nation’s education system from the boot of a liberal bureaucracy intent on imposing its will. It’s a gargantuan task. The Education Department’s budget exceeds $200 billion, a large portion of which is disbursed to state and local education agencies through grants. … The McMahon-led Trump Education Department should not forget that local control of education must be the goal of any policymaking, but the steely resolve that the leaders in these states displayed as they embraced groundbreaking reforms is one that she must emulate with bold conviction. Doing so will change public and private education from preschool to postgraduate school for the better, and set the Education Department on a needed path of reform that will not be easily reversed.”

Will Trump’s Education Department pick empower schools — while placing more controls on them? | Jonathan Zimmerman, Chicago Tribune

“All of these tensions will come crashing down on McMahon, if she’s confirmed. Eliminating the Department of Education is a nonstarter; unless the Republicans eliminate the filibuster, they will never be able to get the 60 Senate votes they would need to get rid of the department. Nor is it clear whether the Trump administration could take federal money away from schools that don’t follow its dictates. It will almost surely revoke the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which barred discrimination based on gender identity. That could lead the Department of Education to sue school districts that allowed trans women to compete on women’s teams, for example. But surely she learned enough to know that Americans are a freedom-loving people. Most of them don’t support book bans, and I doubt they’re going to like it if the federal government tells them how to teach about race or gender. You can’t proclaim your fealty to state control and parents rights with one hand, then force the hand of states and parents with the other. If McMahon is confirmed, she should get ready for a big-time smackdown.”

In your district: Reader responses to high school graduation exam requirements 

We recently asked readers the following question about chronic absenteeism:

What is your opinion on high school graduation exam requirements? 

Thank you to all who responded. Today, we’re sharing a handful of those responses. We’ll return next month with another reader question. 

A school board member in New York wrote:

They should be rigorous. I worry about eliminating the Regents exam in [New York State]  as I don’t want to risk that the diplomas become watered down. Grade inflation is already an issue; eliminating a standardized assessment could further devalue the diploma.

A school board member from Florida wrote:

I believe it is time for my state, Florida, to repeal our graduation testing requirements. As a public school board member, I know that students with disabilities are exempt from these tests and they receive a regular diploma. This is not equitable to the student without a documented disability who may struggle with test anxiety or other testing issues.

A community member from Colorado wrote:

To fully evaluate competency of a subject/course a test should be given; however once the entire high school has completed a ‘test’ summarizing an entire four years of study – it is not a true viable determination of a student’s right to graduate. There are other ways in which to determine/assess the child’s understanding of his entire ‘high school’ experience. What it truly determines is if the student has the knack to learn ‘How to take tests’ in order to graduate. ‘I know, cause that’s my job – teach kids how to take exams.’ It has nothing to do with what you’ve learned from the classes/courses over a four-year period.

When we finish our undergraduate degrees, we aren’t asked to take a ‘final’ exam summarizing our entire 4/5 years of studies; only when we earn a Masters or PhD are we asked to finalize a ‘topic’ of which we’ve researched and can defend the theory based on ‘proof’, documentation/data. Even then, we don’t take a test summarizing every course taken during our stint in college.

A school board member from North Carolina wrote: 

I believe they should be required in all states. They define a required competency attainment to prospective employers.

A retired teacher wrote:

I think if students have taken and passed the courses required to earn their high school diploma, that is enough. If states want to administer end-of-course tests for major requirements like ELA, math, & science and count that as a final exam, I would agree with that.

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

This year, Ballotpedia covered elections for more than 25,000 school board seats in 36 states. We’re expanding our coverage each year with our eye on covering the country’s more than 80,000 school board seats. 

Upcoming school board elections

Ballotpedia covered nearly 4,500 school board elections on Nov. 5, but election season isn’t quite over. Voters in two districts in Louisiana and Texas will decide runoffs in the coming weeks. 

Louisiana

On Dec. 7, voters in New Orleans will decide a general election for Orleans Parish School Board District 2. Eric Jones (D), Gabriela Biro (D), and Chan Tucker (D) ran in the Nov. 5 primary, and Jones and Biro advanced with 43.9% and 30.1% of the vote, respectively. 

Texas

On Dec. 14, voters in Austin will decide a general election runoff for the At-Large Position 8 seat on the Austin Independent School District school board. Fernando Lucas de Urioste and Lindsey Stringer advanced from the six-candidate general election on Nov. 5 with 32.5% and 26% of the vote, respectively. 

Upcoming school board election filing deadlines

Districts in Oklahoma (Dec. 4) and Missouri (Dec. 31) have filing deadlines for 2025 school board races. We’ll have more details on more upcoming filing deadlines and the first school board elections of 2025 in forthcoming editions. 

U.S. district court judge temporarily sides with Massachusetts school officials in AI academic dishonesty case

In the two years since ChatGPT debuted online, becoming the most rapidly adopted computer application in history, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has become a source of both undimmed optimism and profound anxiety in K-12 education spaces. AI tools like ChatGPT can answer questions, compose essays, analyze data, code software, and generate images. They can promote deeper learning—or cheating.

The debate over how AI should be used in schools is playing out in districts, where educators, school board members, administrators, parents, and students are figuring out where to place appropriate limits on AI usage. Such debates are increasingly likely to play out in courtrooms, too. That’s the case in Massachusetts, where a federal judge temporarily sided with K-12 school officials in a lawsuit over academic dishonesty and AI. 

Here’s the background: On Nov. 20, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Paul Levenson denied Dale and Jennifer Harris’ request that Hingham High School (HHS) officials raise their son’s AP U.S. History grade after the school failed him for including AI-generated text in an assignment. The parents had requested a preliminary injunction while the case proceeded.

  • In Fall 2023, the son used Grammarly, an application that identifies grammar and spelling errors and also includes an AI component, to generate text used in a mock documentary script about basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The script included a citations section that referenced made-up books. Students were allowed to use AI tools to generate ideas.
  • An HHS teacher ran the assignment through an AI-detection tool, determining the student had incorporated large amounts of AI-generated text into the script. The teacher gave the student a failing grade on the assignment, and school officials ordered him to a Saturday detention. 

Dale and Jennifer Harris argued school officials unfairly punished their son and hurt his chances at getting into an elite college. The parents said the school’s student handbook did not mention AI.

  • The family’s lawyer said, “We should be embracing artificial intelligence, developing an appropriate curriculum and integration with that in our schools, and in this case this young man is caught in the middle of that.”
  • District officials later updated the student handbook to prohibit students from using AI without authorization. However, HHS officials argued the handbook did prohibit the “unauthorized use of technology during an assessment,” and that students were taught about the proper use of AI in other classes. 

Judge Levenson said the school was likely to win the lawsuit on the merits. Levenson wrote, “​​school officials could reasonably conclude that [the son’s] use of AI was in violation of the school’s academic integrity rules and that any student in [the son’s] position would have understood as much.” 

  • Levenson also wrote that school officials “reasonably concluded that this case did not implicate subtle questions of acceptable practices in deploying a new technology, but rather was a straightforward case of academic dishonesty.”
  • The parties will meet again on Dec. 4 for the next hearing in the case. 

From federal agencies to school districts, education stakeholders are still developing AI guidance. The U.S. Department of Education (DoE) and 20 state education departments have issued AI guidance or policy frameworks for K-12 public school districts. 

  • On Oct. 25, the DoE’s Office of Educational Technology released its AI toolkit for K-12 stakeholders. The document “provides guidance for the effective use and integration of AI in teaching and learning and presents an overview of Federal laws and considerations that are essential to anchoring and ensuring the use of AI in a safe, secure, and non-discriminatory manner.” On Nov. 22, the DoE’s Office for Civil Rights released guidance on “Avoiding the Discriminatory Use of Artificial Intelligence.” 
  • State school boards associations in states like South Dakota, Missouri, and elsewhere have released AI resources. The Missouri School Boards’ Association (MSBA), for example, released an AI toolkit for K-12 education in June 2024. You can read our interview on AI and education with MSBA’S Director of Digital Initiatives Mark Henderson here.

Many teachers say they’ve received no training on AI. According to an October EdWeek Research Center survey of educators, 58% of teachers said they had received no professional development on using AI in the classroom. 

  • In the survey, 24% said they had received one session on AI usage and 13% said they had received more than one. A third of teachers said they had not used AI tools in their classrooms and did not plan to start. 
  • A Pew Research Center survey of K-12 public school teachers in late 2023 found that only 6% said AI tools generally provide “more benefit than harm,” while 25% said the reverse. Thirty-two percent said AI tools provide an “equal mix of benefit and harm,” while 35% said they weren’t sure. 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, lawmakers in at least 45 states proposed legislation related to AI in 2024—and at least 31 states adopted bills. Some of the bills covered AI in K-12 schools.

  • Tennessee lawmakers, for example, approved SB 1711, on March 19, requiring local school boards to “adopt a policy regarding the use of artificial intelligence technology by students, faculty, and staff for instructional and assignment purposes.” 
  • Lawmakers have also filed bills addressing deepfakes—videos, images, or audio files generated or manipulated by AI to realistically portray something that did not actually occur. For example, lawmakers in New Jersey introduced Bill A4736 on Sept. 12. The bill would extend “the public school law on harassment, intimidation, and bullying to apply to certain acts of fraudulent impersonation or false depiction by means of artificial intelligence or deepfake technology.” 
  • Ballotpedia’s AI deepfake legislation tracker is a free tool that allows you to monitor and track deepfake legislation in all 50 states. Click here to use the Tracker.

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 taking a look at the survey responses from candidates running in two upcoming elections in Louisiana and Texas.

Gabriela Biro (D) is running in the Dec. 7 general election for Orleans Parish School Board District 2 against Eric Jones (D). Louisiana uses a majority-vote system, in which all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, compete in a primary. If no candidate wins a majority, then the top-two vote-getters advance to a general election. 

Jones had not completed the survey at the time of this writing. 

Fernando Lucas de Urioste and Lindsey Stringer are running in the Dec. 14 general election runoff for Austin Independent School District At-large Position 8. Stringer had not completed the survey at the time of this writing. 

Here’s how Biro answered the question, “What was the last song that got stuck in your head?”

  • “Inclusive & Holistic Education: I believe quality education should be accessible to all New Orleans families regardless of income, disability, or background. I advocate for safe and supportive educational environments that foster students’ physical and emotional well-being, preparing them for success in the twenty-first century.
  • Support Teachers & Staff I want to ensure fair pay, comprehensive benefits, and strong union support for teachers and staff to reinforce their vital community roles. When pay and working conditions are adequate for teachers, we end the cycle of staff burnout and turnover. This supports long-term teaching roles that allow educators to cultivate their skills and experience to best serve our communities.
  • Accountability & Integrity: I am running to combat corruption and charter school churn. Furthermore, I aim to protect the integrity of public schools by ensuring accountability, and opposing divisive culture-war policies.”

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

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

“Special Education, education equity and access, appropriate State funding for public education, fair pay and work conditions for teachers and hourly staff, culturally relevant and inclusive curricula, social and emotional learning, student safety and wellness that includes mental health services and keeping schools safe from violence, early childhood educational programming, equitable maintenance and improvement of school facilities, fighting against vouchers and voucher-like programs that divert funding from public schools.”

Click here to read the rest of Urioste’s 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!