Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #109

By

Ballotpedia staff

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

In today’s edition, you’ll find:

  • On the issues: The debate over anti-communist public school instruction 
  • Share candidate endorsements with us!
  • A roundup of May 4 school board election results in Texas
  • Michigan voters in the Grant Public School District reject efforts to recall two board members
  • 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 anti-communist public school instruction

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.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed Senate Bill 1264 on April 17. The law will require public schools to teach the history of communism, including “atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism and the “increasing threat of communism in the United States and to our allies.”  

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. writes that communism remains a threat to the U.S., including from China, North Korea, and nearby Cuba. Diaz says curriculum opposing communism is necessary to prevent history from repeating itself. He also says the instruction will be age-appropriate and not aim to scare children.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel and The Orlando Sentinel editorial boards write that politicians should not decide what and how schools teach. They say communism is not a threat to the U.S. and that schools should focus on teaching the virtues of democracy instead of unsettling students with biased instruction on irrelevant political ideologies. 

Florida education commissioner: Why we must teach true history of communism in schools | Manny Diaz, Jr., The Miami Herald

“It is widely understood that those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it, and that is exactly why the true history of communism should be taught in public schools. In Florida, we are taking the lead. Beginning in the 2026-2027 school year, public school students will learn that 110 million people died under communist rule from 1900 to 1987, and that this horribly flawed political and economic philosophy has spawned misery and despair across the globe. Sadly, even today, communist rule subjugates millions of innocent people. Whether it’s North Korea, Venezuela, China, the former Soviet Union or any other communist regime, their fabled utopia is always around the next corner — but never comes. Instead, populations are stripped of human rights and forced to suffer through poverty, starvation, suppression of speech and systemic lethal violence. … We cannot look past this historical nightmare. It is our moral duty to educate students about the history of communism, just as we educate them about the Holocaust and the hideous evil of Nazi Germany, the history of Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during World War II, the history of African Americans, including slavery, abolition, racism, segregation, and more. … All of this groundbreaking instruction will be taught in an age and developmentally appropriate manner, and with the highest standards of professionalism and accuracy.”

The Florida Legislature’s obsession with communism is so 1952 | The Editorial Board, The South Florida Sun Sentinel and The Orlando Sentinel

“The issue isn’t how old kids should be when the state scares them with political bogeymen. It’s about the bill itself. No legislature ever should command any subject to be taught in the slanted way these bills prescribe. Politicians are the last people who should be dictating classroom content. … They’re also fighting the wrong battle, as politicians often do. It’s another diversion — some would say a cynical one — from the real dangers to democracy in the United States.

Communism faded away in the 1940s as a political influence anywhere in the U.S., despite Joseph McCarthy’s overblown and highly destructive anti-Communist crusade in the early 1950s. It is no threat to our politics or economy, even if some young people have unquestioningly embraced communism’s hammer-and-sickle symbol. … The new threats to freedom are personified by authoritarians like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and by a deadly serious antidemocratic movement here at home. … The Legislature should be ensuring that schools teach the positive values of democracy, rather than beating a dead horse.”

Share candidate endorsements with us! 

As part of our goal to solve the ballot information problem, Ballotpedia is gathering information about school board candidate endorsements. The ballot information gap widens the further down the ballot you go, and is worst for the more than 500,000 local offices nationwide, such as school boards or special districts. Endorsements can help voters know more about their candidates and what they stand for. 

Do you know of an individual or group that has endorsed a candidate in your district? 

Click here to respond!

A roundup of May 4 school board election results in Texas

On May 4, Texas voters decided local elections and ballot measures. For many in the Lone Star State, that included elections for their local school board. 

We covered school board elections for 46 districts within our coverage scope, including in the Dallas Independent School District, the state’s second-largest by enrollment. Not all districts in the state held elections on May 4. Some will do so in November. Texas election rulss state “Independent school districts in Texas must hold regular general elections either on the first Saturday in May or on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.”

School board elections this year are taking place against the backdrop of broader education debates in the Lone Star State around funding, teacher recruitment and retention, declining student enrollment, and school choice.  

Let’s look at some noteworthy election results. 

Dallas

Two seats were up for election on the Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD) school board. According to the Dallas Morning News’ Marcela Rodrigues, “Two new trustees will steer the second-largest district in Texas as it works to boost student performance and manage Dallas ISD’s roughly $1.9 billion budget.”

Results below are unofficial:

Currie said he was running because “If we don’t win, it’s possible no school board trustees will have kids enrolled in Dallas ISD next year. We need a trustee living through the experiences of a DISD parent. My choice to enroll my children in public school sets me apart.”

Turner listed student safety and combatting fentanyl as top priorities. Turner has a daughter in the school system. 

San Antonio 

Four seats were up for election on the North East Independent School District (NEISD) school board in San Antonio. There was a special election for one board seat. Twelve candidates were on the ballot. 

NEISD is the state’s 11th-largest by enrollment. 

According to San Antonio Reports’ Andrea Drusch and Isaac Windes, “Two years after cracking into North East Independent School District on San Antonio’s North Side, conservative groups were beat back in a big way Saturday night. With five openings on the school district’s ballot, a slate of candidates backed by the local Democratic Party, the parent teachers association and public education advocates won each of them.”

In 2022, Parents United for Freedom, an organization established to “defend and protect parental rights within the school system and to reclaim our schools from any harmful agendas being promoted,” backed two conservative candidates who defeated incumbents. When incumbent Terri Williams died several months later, the board was left ideologically split.

According to campaign finance reports filed eight days before the election, the candidates and PACs had spent more than $66,000. Texas Public Radio’s Camille Phillips notes that “candidates in contested races in 2016 and 2020 raised $3,000 to $4,000 all-in.”  

Click here to see election results for each district. 

Houston

Two seats were up for election on the Katy Independent School District school board east of Houston. Katy ISD is the state’s fifth-largest by enrollment. 

Incumbents Rebecca Fox and Dawn Champagne were re-elected. Fox defeated Donovan Campbell 59.4% to 40.6%, while Champagne defeated David Olson 58.9% to 41.1%. 

According to Houston Public Media’s Natalie Weber, Fox and Champagne “voted against a policy that would require teachers to contact parents whose children came out as transgender. The policy also required trans students to use the bathrooms for their sex at birth and banned discussions of gender fluidity in the classroom.”

The board voted 4-3 to adopt the policy on Aug. 29, 2023. On May 6, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the policy.

Both Campbell and Olson said they supported the policy. 

Fort Worth 

Two seats were up for election on the Keller Independent School District (KISD) school board. KISD, in Tarrant County, includes parts of Fort Worth and is the 36th-largest district in the state.  

In 2022, school board elections in Tarrant County school board elections revolved around issues like Critical Race Theory (CRT) and sex and gender in schools. The Texas Tribune’s Jason Beeferman and Brian Lopez wrote that “As Tarrant County continues moving away from its perch as one of America’s reddest urban counties and public schools increasingly serve as battlefields for culture wars, school board races in four North Texas districts have quickly transformed from traditionally low-profile contests into high-stakes political conflicts.”

One of those districts was KISD. Conservative candidates backed by organizations like the 1776 Project PAC, which described itself as fighting back against the teaching of CRT, won all three seats. 

This year, the 1776 Project PAC backed Randklev and Washington.  

Click here for our complete Hall Pass coverage of Tarrant County school board elections in spring 2022.    

With nearly 5.5 million students enrolled in K-12 public schools, Texas is second only to California when it comes to the public school student population. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Texas accounted for more than 11% of all public school students as of the fall 2023 school year. 

However, Texas outranks California and all other states in two respects—it has more K-12 districts (1,022) and elected school board members (6,994) than any other state. 

Michigan voters in the Grant Public School District reject efforts to recall two board members

On May 7, voters in the Grant Public School District in Michigan rejected efforts to recall Rachal Gort and Richard Vance, two members of the district’s board of education. Gort defeated Mindy Conley 53.9% to 46.1%, while Vance defeated Lindsay Mahlich 52.5% to 47.5%.  

Michigan is one of five states—along with Arizona, Nevada, North Dakota, and Wisconsin—in which an official facing a recall appears on the ballot with a challenger (in Colorado and in some recalls in California, voters select a replacement candidate on the ballot only if they first indicate they approve of recalling the official). Twenty-three states allow for the recall of school board members

This was the fifth school board recall to go to a vote in 2024.

The effort to recall Gort and Vance began after a June 2023 vote in which the seven-member board voted 4-3 to issue a 90-day termination letter to Family Health Care. The provider has operated a health clinic in the district’s middle school since 2010. Due to the termination letter, the clinic’s contract with the district was scheduled to end on Oct. 6, 2023. 

On Sept. 11, 2023, the board unanimously voted to approve a new contract with Family Health Care, keeping the clinic open. The contract included the stipulation that the school remove a student-painted mural featuring LGBTQ+ imagery by the end of October 2023. Under the contract, the superintendent and school board president must approve any future decorations in the clinic.

Grant Public School District is the 221st-largest district in Michigan, with about 2,000 students. 

Between 2009 and 2023, Ballotpedia identified an average of 35 recall efforts against an average of 81 school board members each year. A total of 19.28% of the school board members included in the efforts faced recall elections, and 10.21% of school board members were removed from office.

Click here to learn more about this year’s upcoming recall elections. 

Extracurricular: education news and numbers 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 Alvin Crook and Tamarques Porter, two candidates running in the Aug. 1 general election for Memphis-Shelby County Schools school board, District 4, in Tennessee. 

James Q. Bacchus, Eric Harris, and Anecia Washington are also running in the election, though only Crook and Porter have completed the survey. 

Memphis-Shelby County Schools is the largest district in Tennessee, with an estimated enrollment of 113,000 students. Five seats on the nine-member board are up for election this year. 

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

  • “A voice for the community
  • Fighting for Teachers
  • Fighting for students”

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

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

  • “Commitment to Educational Excellence: As a board member I plan to diagnose and address gaps in learning through enhanced diagnostic assessments. I propose targeted interventions for students who are underperforming, including after-school tutoring programs, summer learning opportunities, and specialized support for subjects like math and reading. I want to emphasize the importance of high expectations and rigorous standards for all students to ensure they achieve their fullest potential.
  • I want to improve mental health resources: Propose the implementation or expansion of on-site mental health services, including hiring more school counselors and psychologists to ensure students have access to professional support. Advocate for the integration of mental health education into the school curriculum to raise awareness and reduce stigma, empowering students to seek help when needed. Plan regular workshops and seminars for students, parents, and staff on topics such as stress management, emotional resilience, and healthy coping mechanisms. Strengthening Security Measures: Call for a comprehensive review and upgrade of physical security measures in schools, such as improved lighting, secure entrances, and surveillance systems.
  • I will commit to establishing or strengthening advisory councils that include parents, teachers, and students to provide input on school policies and decisions. These councils can serve as a critical link between the school board and the community, ensuring that diverse perspectives are considered in decision-making. Propose regular town hall meetings where community members can express their concerns, provide feedback, and suggest improvements. These meetings should be scheduled at convenient times to maximize participation. Outline Plans for Regular Community Meetings: Schedule consistent and predictable community forums and workshops throughout the school year.”

Click here to read the rest of Porter’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!

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.