Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #152

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: The debate over AI in K-12 schools 
  • School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
  • The U.S. Supreme Court and K-12 education in 2025, Part 1: Mahmoud v. Taylor
  • Extracurricular: education news and numbers from around the web
  • Candidate Connection survey

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On the issues: The debate over artificial intelligence (AI) in K-12 schools

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 incorporate AI into their curricula?

What are the arguments?

Loni Mahanta writes that U.S. schools need to teach AI literacy and readiness to ensure students remain competitive with children in China and elsewhere. Mahanta says prioritizing effective AI use and innovation in classrooms will help keep America at the forefront of the global economy. 

Joseph R. Murray writes that schools should avoid incorporating AI. Murray says it prevents students from developing critical thinking skills and building real knowledge and character. He says previous efforts to push new technologies in classrooms, such as iPads, have been more likely to distract students than enable learning.  

Read on

AI Education Is the New Space Race. Here’s How America Must Respond | Loni Mahanta, The 74 Million

“Countries that lead in AI education will subsequently lead in AI-driven economic growth and military advancement. If the U.S. doesn’t prioritize AI literacy and readiness, it isn’t just setting students up for failure — it’s undermining its own economic and national security. By 2030, artificial intelligence will contribute nearly $20 trillion to the global economy. America must stay at the forefront. This means AI literacy — the fundamental understanding of these technological tools — isn’t optional. Neither is AI readiness, the ability to leverage those tools to the nation’s advantage. Instilling both concepts in America’s schools will set the foundation for the future. … America must rise to the moment. … The new technological developments and educational investments in places like China require a similar response. America must push forward to implement AI education that will help the nation prosper and compete in the years ahead.”

Think our education system is bad now? Wait ’til AI takes over. | Joseph R. Murray, The Hill

“Nobody likes doing grunt work. It is hard, tedious and time-consuming. But it is also a process that builds character and knowledge. It is the process by which students become critical thinkers who have built a strong foundation on which they can tackle the problems that, most assuredly, will come before them. Public education, however, has become a go-with-the-flow enterprise — and in an age where students see a social media platform where you can obtain fame without hard work, why shouldn’t they be able to receive the ‘A’ without doing the study? That is exactly what AI provides: a short cut. … The usual retort [i]s that we need to teach students how to use AI. But this is a cop-out. When school districts rushed laptops and iPads into classrooms, they said they would teach students how to use them. Fifteen years later, can we say students use these devices for academic pursuits? Or do they use them to play games in class without detection?”

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

In 2025, Ballotpedia will cover elections for more than 30,000 school board seats. 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

  • May 3—Texas
  • May 6—Montana, Ohio
  • May 13—Arkansas and Delaware
  • May 20—New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon

Click here for more information on upcoming elections in your state.

Election results from the past week 

Newark Public Schools

We previewed this election in the April 9 edition of Hall Pass. Voters, including 16-and 17-year-olds residing in Newark’s city limits, cast ballots April 15. 

Newark Public Schools is the largest district in New Jersey, with roughly 41,600 students.

Here’s an update on the results. 

Early results show mayor-backed “Moving Newark Schools Forward” slate winning

Preliminary results, which do not include mail-in ballots, show the three candidates running as part of the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” slate running ahead of the other eight candidates. “Moving Newark Schools Forward” was one of two, three-candidate slates running in the election. The other was the “Prioritizing Newark’s Children” slate. 

Candidates running under the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” banner have won all elections to the board since 2016

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka endorsed the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” slate this year, a tradition he has maintained since at least 2011, when he was still serving on the Newark City Council.  

This was the first year 16-and 17-year-olds could vote in a New Jersey election

The Newark City Council voted to lower the voting age for local school board elections in January 2024. 

According to Chalkbeat Newark’s Jessie Gómez, 1,772 teenagers had registered to vote in the run-up to the election. “That falls short of the 7,257 who could have signed up,” Gomez wrote.

Read more about this election here. 

The U.S. Supreme Court and K-12 education in 2025, Part 1: Mahmoud v. Taylor

Periodically, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agrees to hear cases with implications for K-12 public schools. In previous years, Hall Pass has provided coverage of many of those decisions, helping readers better understand the justices’ reasoning and the consequences for the country’s more than 13,000 school districts. Recent K-12 education-related SCOTUS cases include:

This year, SCOTUS is scheduled to decide several K-12 education-related cases, including Mahmoud v. Taylor and Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. SCOTUS will hear oral arguments in both cases in April, with arguments for Mahmoud scheduled for April 22. We’ll look at Mahmoud in this edition and Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board next week.   

The case 

SCOTUS agreed to hear in Mahmoud v. Taylor on Jan. 17. A group of Maryland families from different religious backgrounds—including Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox—sued the Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education in March 2023 after it rescinded a policy that allowed parents to remove their children from lessons involving books with LGBTQ themes. The parents argued the board’s elimination of notification and opt-out options violated state and federal law. 

A U.S. District Court judge denied the parents’ initial request to require the district to restore its opt-out policy. On May 15, 2024, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled 2-1 to uphold the district court’s ruling, saying the parents had not demonstrated that the “storybooks are being implemented in a way that directly or indirectly coerces the parents or their children to believe or act contrary to their religious faith.”

The parents presented the following question to SCOTUS: “Do public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and with-out notice or opportunity to opt out?”

Background 

In 2022, Montgomery County Public Schools—the largest in Maryland with roughly 161,000 students—added several books with LGBTQ themes to its English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade. The additions included titles such as Pride Puppy and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope. 

Initially, the board stated parents would receive notifications about any lessons featuring the books and could choose to opt their students out of those discussions. However, the board later reversed course, stating, “MCPS expects all classrooms to be inclusive and safe spaces for students, including those who identify as LGBTQ+ or have family members in the LGBTQ+ community. A broad representation of personal characteristics within curricular or instructional materials promotes this desired outcome. Therefore, as with all curriculum resources, there is an expectation that teachers utilize these inclusive lessons and texts with all students.”

Maryland law states “the local school system shall establish policies, guidelines, and/or procedures for student opt-out regarding instruction related to family life and human sexuality objectives.” The board said the law did not apply because the books with LGBTQ+ themes are part of the ELA curriculum—not health education. The families suing the board disagreed, writing in their initial complaint that “the forced inculcation of the Pride Storybooks without parental notice or opt-out rights burdens the [p]arents’ right to form their children on a matter of core religious exercise and parenting: how to understand who they are.”

What’s at stake

Mahmoud is part of a national debate over not only the role of parents in public education but also how schools should manage differences in values within their communities. School board members and candidates supporting parents’ rights have claimed schools abandoned traditional education to push progressive values through new curricula and controversial books—often without parental knowledge or consent. Others board members and candidates, however, have countered that parents’ rights is a byword that masks bigotry toward LGBTQ+ students and families, and that public schools must be welcoming spaces for students of all backgrounds.

Twenty-five states have enacted laws affirming parents’ rights to oversee the upbringing and education of their children. Sixteen of those states have a Republican trifecta, while two—Colorado and Washington—have a Democratic trifecta. 

Here’s how legal experts from across the political spectrum are thinking about Mahmoud’s implications:

  • In a brief supporting the plaintiffs, Regent University law professors S. Ernie Walton and Eric Degroff write, “history shows that parental opt-outs, such as the one sought by Petitioners in this case, are an appropriate compromise between the parents’ religious duty to guide their children’s development and the state’s desire to foster community in a religiously heterogeneous society.”
  • Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox who focuses on federal courts, writes that if SCOTUS rules in support of the families suing the Montgomery County Public Schools board, “every public school would have to provide advance notice to any parent about any lesson that might offend that parent’s religious views. But, in a nation as religiously diverse as the United States, it is simply not possible for public schools to comply with such an obligation.”

Click here to read more about Mahmoud v. Taylor. 

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 responses from two candidates running in Texas’ May 3 general school board elections.

John Biggan and Jay Fitch are running to represent Place 2 on the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District school board. The district is located northeast of Fort Worth in Bedford, and enrolls roughly 23,000 students. 

Here’s how Biggan answered the question, “What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?”

  • “Students First, Always I’m committed to supporting every student in HEB ISD with safe campuses, strong academics, and opportunities in arts, athletics, and career pathways—because every child deserves a chance to thrive.
  • Smart, Responsible Leadership With a background in data science and nearly 20 years of experience in education and child welfare, I’ll use data-driven decision-making and fiscal transparency to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and effectively.
  • Defending Public Education I’ll advocate for increased state and federal funding for our schools and stand strong against private school vouchers that drain resources from public classrooms. Public education should be strengthened—not undermined.”

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

Here’s how Fitch answered the question, “What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?”

  • “Students are the ‘main thing’ and every decision must have their best interest in mind.
  • Parent involvement is the key to student success. As our demographic changes we have to find innovative ways to make sure the parents know how vital they are in their child’s education.
  • Teachers are the backbone of a district. We must recruit the best and keep them in our district. We have to find ways to respect teachers’ time and eliminate repetitive, unnecessary meetings and professional development.”

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

Everyone deserves to know their candidates. However, we know it can be hard for voters to find information about their candidates, especially for local offices such as school boards. That’s why we created Candidate Connection — a survey designed to help candidates tell voters about their campaigns, their issues, and so much more. 

In the 2024 election cycle, 6,539 candidates completed the survey, including more than 500 school board candidates. 

If you’re a school board candidate or incumbent, click here to take 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 appear in your Ballotpedia profile. Your responses will also appear in our sample ballot.

And 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!