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 teaching controversial topics 
• School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
• Budget reconciliation bill enacts first federal private school choice program 
• School board authority across the 50 states series (Week 4): Election timing
• 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 teaching controversial topics

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.

Where’s the line between teaching controversial topics and engaging in personal activism? Should teachers decide where that line is drawn?

Marissa McCue Armitage says teachers are in a lose-lose situation where no matter what they teach, one group of parents or administrators will be upset. Armitage says even though it’s uncomfortable, she will continue teaching topics like gender identity and racial concepts rather than avoiding controversy.

Fredrick Hess says Armitage’s attitude is that of a culture warrior and not a teacher. Hess says most Americans don’t have a problem with teaching negative aspects of history or society like slavery. But he says Armitage fails to make an appropriate distinction between teaching the unflattering parts of American history and inappropriately imposing gender and racial ideologies. 

Certain Topics Spark Parent Pushback. I’ve Decided to Teach Them Anyway | Marissa McCue Armitage, Education Week

“To some of my community members, I’m not doing enough. According to some parents, it is a teacher’s obligation to teach topics about gender and race. They believe educators may be the key to teaching tolerance and to make sure everyone is represented. It may literally save a life for a student to see themselves in a book. To others in the community, it is not a teachers’ place to discuss the uglier sides of American history. To these parents, I am indoctrinating their children, poisoning them with my ideas. It’s a lose-lose situation for me; I am set up to fail. How can I possibly please everyone? How are educators supposed to navigate this intense climate of political divisiveness? … Are teachers now forced to choose between themselves and the good of their students? Are we asking too much of teachers? … I decided that I am going to get comfortable with discomfort, including when covering topics that some parents may object to. … I have accepted that my job isn’t to avoid controversy but to lean into the discomfort and teach it anyway.”

How to Resist the Destructive Self-Indulgence of Teachers on a Soapbox | Frederick Hess, Education Next

“Armitage’s op-ed is worth noting because it serves as a pitch-perfect illustration of what it means to be a culture warrior instead of an educator. Along the way, her piece (unintentionally) provides a pretty good rundown of the problems and corresponding solutions for those ready to get back to the work of teaching. … Truth is, the lion’s share of Americans are fine with teaching the bad stuff. What they don’t want is teachers imposing ideology, preaching gender dogma, reducing identity to pigmentation, or pretending American history is one long parade of horribles. There’s nothing to suggest that Armitage gets this. … That’s not what I see in Armitage’s op-ed. Classrooms are a place for responsible professionals, not self-indulgent activists eager to test drive each new cause du jour they encounter in a webinar or DEI training. That’s how schools got lured into the center of our culture clashes. Refusing to take the bait is how educators can get off the hook.”

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.    

• Aug. 5—Kansas, Washington
• Aug. 12—Minnesota, Utah
• Aug. 26—Alabama
• Sept. 16—New Hampshire

Budget reconciliation bill enacts first federal private school choice program 

On July 4, President Donald Trump (R) signed Congress’ budget reconciliation bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law addresses tax policy, border security and immigration, defense, energy production, the debt limit, adjustments to SNAP and Medicaid—and creates the nation’s first ever federal private school choice program. 

We covered an early version of the proposed program, called the Educational Choice for Children Act, in the May 21 edition of this newsletter. The version Trump signed into law differs in some respects from the one that was originally introduced in the House.

Program details

The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) creates a one-for-one federal tax credit individuals can use to lower their tax liability, while at the same time providing a donation to students for private educational expenses. 

In contrast to an earlier House version of the ECCA, states must now choose to opt in to the program. Of the 23 states with Republican trifectas, only North Dakota and Nebraska lack a private school choice program. In contrast, there are no private school choice programs in 12 of the 15 states with Democratic trifectas.   

Here is the lowdown on the ECCA:

• Individuals can lower their tax liability by $1 for every $1 donated to accredited Scholarship-Granting Organizations (SGOs), up to $1,700 for individual filers. Among other requirements, the SGOs must be federally recognized 501(c)(3) charity organizations. 
• Residents of any state can take advantage of the tax credit regardless of how many states opt into the program.  
• The SGOs must use the contribution to fund scholarships for students with a family income up to 300% of the median income in their area. For example, a family in Boise, Idaho, where the median family income is $81,308, would be eligible for scholarships if they made under $244,000. 
• The scholarships will cover various educational expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring, educational therapies, transportation, and technology. In participating states, scholarships may also help cover supplemental costs for students enrolled in public schools.
• There is no overall limit on the aggregate cost of the program. In earlier versions of the bill, the program was capped at $5 billion through 2029, with 5% annual increases thereafter.

The law does not specify a scholarship amount students can receive through the SGOs. 

The program is set to begin in 2027.

Differences between legislative versions of the ECCA

The introduced version included the following provisions, which were later amended or removed:

• Donors could have lowered their tax liability $1 for every $1 donated to accredited Scholarship-Granting Organizations (SGOs) up to 10% of their adjusted gross income or $5,000 for individual filers.
• The scholarships would have been capped at $5,000 per student.
• The scholarships would have been explicitly available to homeschooling families.
• Private schools receiving money from the scholarships would have been required to provide accommodations to students with disabilities.

Many details are still to be worked out

The law tasks the U.S. Education Department with writing the administrative regulations that will govern the ECCA. Details yet to be filled in include state reporting requirements, the certification process for SGOs, and any guidance regarding scholarship eligibility and award amounts. 

Reactions

Reactions to the program in Congress split largely along partisan lines, with Republicans arguing the program expands the educational options available to parents and Democrats arguing the program is a handout to wealthy families that does nothing to boost public school funding.  

• U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said, “School choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Every child, regardless of race or wealth or ethnicity, deserves access to an excellent education. This tax credit provision will unleash billions of dollars every single year for scholarships for kids to attend the K-12 school of their choice.”
• U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) said, “One thing we should certainly not be doing is creating a two-tier education system in America — private schools for the wealthy and well-connected, and severely underfunded public schools for low-income, disabled and working class kids.”

History of the budget reconciliation law

The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives 215-214 on May 22, with 213 Republicans supporting it and two Republicans and all Democrats opposing. The U.S. Senate passed the bill 51-50 on July 1, with 50 Republicans supporting it and three Republicans joining all 47 Democrats to oppose it; Vice President J.D. Vance (R) cast the tiebreaking vote to pass the bill.

Trump signed the bill on July 4.

What is a tax-credit scholarship program?

The structure of tax-credit-based school choice programs, including how families receive funding for educational expenses, can vary. Common program types include:

• Tax-credit scholarships: Nonprofit organizations distribute scholarships to families for educational expenses. 
• Tax-credit education savings accounts (ESAs): Scholarships are deposited into unique accounts that families can access to make eligible educational expenses. 
• Refundable credits: This kind of program allows parents to claim back approved educational expenses on their state taxes. If the amount they spend on those approved expenses exceeds what they owe in taxes, the state refunds them up to a set amount.  
• Individual credit and deductions: Depending on the state or program, families can use approved educational expenses to lower the total amount they owe in taxes (credit) or reduce their taxable income (deduction). Unlike a refundable credit, families cannot receive money from the state if their expenses exceed their tax or they never owed taxes in the first place. 

Twenty-five states ran 38 education tax credit programs as of June 2025.

Click here to learn more about this budget reconciliation law. Click here to learn more about private school choice in the 50 states. 

School board authority across the 50 states series (Week 4): Election timing

Last week, we discussed the authority school boards have over authorizing charter schools in their districts. This week, we look at the districts with authority over election timing and other election administration details.

Some states give school boards authority to choose election dates, the frequency of the elections, the length of terms, whether or not school board elections are staggered (meaning what portion of school board members are elected in a given election), and other aspects of their own elections.

Some boards with authority over election timing can decide between on-cycle elections—held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November of even-numbered years—and off-cycle elections, which occur on any other date. Election timing is typically the largest single variable that determines voter turnout, though the impact of timing on turnout varies by state and jurisdiction. The most significant difference in turnout is between on-cycle and off-cycle elections, with on-cycle elections having higher voter turnout.

Off-cycle elections influence voter turnout. Factors that further influence turnout during off-cycle elections include:

• Whether school board elections happen in tandem with statewide primaries, statewide general elections, or statewide runoffs; or
• Whether the ballot includes state elections or just local ones. 

In most of the country, school boards don’t have authority over election timing:

• 42 states mandate school board election timing through state law.
• 5 states allow school boards to choose from a set list of dates.
• 2 states permit boards to select an election date within a given range.
• Hawaii does not have an elected school board.

State laws determining when school board elections are held more often than not mandate off-cycle elections. For example:

• Pennsylvania holds school board elections in odd-numbered years, even though they occur on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.
• South Dakota allows school boards to choose their election times from a day between the second Tuesday in April and the third Tuesday in June each year. School districts can but are not required to consolidate their elections with municipal elections.
• Arkansas allows school boards to choose between a fall and spring election schedule. Fall elections coincide with general elections, while spring elections coincide with primary elections.

The map below shows each state’s rules regarding school board authority over election timing.

Read more about rules governing school board elections and timing here and here! See you next week for more on how statewide curriculum prohibitions affect school board authority.

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! 

• No one actually likes high expectations | Fordham Institute
• What a Smaller Education Department Is Doing Under Trump | The New York Times
• Cell phone use affects parent-child interactions, even when adults aren’t online | CNN
• What Can We Learn from the Nation’s Oldest Voucher Program? | Education Next
• Erratic results, high costs doomed this districtwide student improvement program | EdSource
• Legal experts weigh in on the implications of the 2025 Supreme Court term for K-12 education | Brookings
• Teachers’ union NEA members endorse cutting ties with ADL | Axios
• New York City Transformed Education with Pre-K For All. School Integration Should Be Next. | The Century Foundation
• How Trump is deploying multiple agencies to set education policy | K-12 Dive

Take our Candidate Connection survey to reach voters in your district

Today, we’re looking at survey responses from two candidates running in a school board election in Wichita, Kansas. 

Incumbent Hazel Stabler and Amy Warren are running in the Nov. 4 general election for District 6 on the Wichita Public Schools Board of Education. Stabler was first elected in 2022. The Aug. 5 primary was cancelled because only two candidates entered the race. 

Wichita Public Schools is the largest district in Kansas with roughly 46,500 students. The board comprises seven members elected to four-year terms.

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

“I’m passionate about public education policy that centers student achievement, equity, and community engagement. I believe that every child—regardless of their ZIP code—deserves access to a high-quality education that prepares them for a successful future.

Specifically, I focus on:

• Early Literacy – Advocating for strong foundational reading skills by third grade, because early success in reading is one of the strongest predictors of lifelong academic achievement.
• Equity in School Resources – Ensuring that all schools have access to the tools, staff, and support systems they need, especially in underserved communities.
• Community-Informed Decision Making –Supporting policies that bring families, educators, and local stakeholders in.”

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

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

“I’m personally passionate about policies pertaining to screen-based technology and personal devices in schools. With years of experience in national and local advocacy work around this subject, I’ve seen the difference effective policies can make on academic achievement, school safety, attendance, and also student mental health.

Additionally, I’m passionate about responsible budget solutions and the need for public education to be fully funded. I’m concerned about the reduction and re-distribution of educational funds that take away from necessary programs that help all students access quality public education and the potential for this to create greater inequity in our city.”

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

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!