Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #131

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 achievement gaps 
  • School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
  • 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 how to close achievement gaps

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.

Achievement gaps refer to differences in academic performance between racial, socio-economic, and other groups. For example, Black students tend to underperform white students on average, and poorer students tend to underperform wealthier students.

Goldy Brown III writes that time spent on homework and other educational activities directly affects student outcomes. Brown says students from two-parent families tend to spend more time on school-related activities. He says discussions about achievement gaps should recognize that schools are not enough to fix the problem and focus on providing more resources to disadvantaged families.

Bettina Love writes that discussions about achievement gaps distract from racism and other issues in school funding and power dynamics. Love says Black students and majority-Black schools are systemically underfunded. She says closing gaps requires deeper redistribution of resources and performance gap discussions distract from that need.

Closing Educational Gaps: It May Be Just a Matter of Time | Goldy Brown III, RealClearEducation

“Addressing these issues effectively has proven difficult because many policymakers and scholars have argued discussion of persistent achievement gaps perpetuates harm. Rather than casting blame, we have the tools and data to take an empirical approach to understanding the factors that statistically explain these disparities among different groups of students. One critical factor that has been overlooked for years is how children allocate their time from birth to age 18. Economists, such as Michael Keane and Kenneth Wolpin, have long argued that this factor is the most important determinant of career outcomes. … The home environment a child lives in from birth to 18 directly correlates to the amount of quality adult time they receive and the educational activities they get exposed to based on the resources their parents have. … When we look at the data, 88% of Asian American children are raised in a two-parent home, compared to 77% among White Americans, 62% among Hispanic Americans, and 38% among African Americans. Compare these numbers with time on homework and this ironically correlates to educational outcomes from each group on national assessments. Based on this reality, we need to ask the following: Are schools alone able to address the time gap? Are we targeting our education policy in the right areas? What additional things are necessary to solve these gaps?”

Stop Talking About ‘Gaps’ in Education—Talk About Harm | Bettina L. Love, EducationWeek

“When I started writing for publication lest I perish, I followed right along placing that blame for the failures of our education system on the faceless, unindictable but infamous arbitrator of educational injustice: the ‘gap.’ However, over the years, I have learned that the word obscures the harm of racism and anti-Blackness, which are the root causes of the so-called ‘gap.’ To use ‘gap’ implies that white students ‘outperforming’ Black students on standardized tests just somehow happened or is the failure of Black children and their families themselves`. Invoking the word ‘gap’ when discussing racial inequality in our education system makes racism illegible. Calling this nation’s failure to adequately and equitably fund Black students’ education a “funding gap” removes the intent of white supremacy to remain in power by underfunding students of color. The word ‘gap’ also fails to acknowledge the power dynamic that is maintained by withholding and hoarding resources from Black and brown students. It would be easy to think, then, that ‘gaps’ could be closed without any fundamental redistribution of power and resources. But working on eliminating these differences without an anti-racist aim perpetuates racism by pretending it doesn’t exist.”

School board update: filing deadlines, upcoming elections, and results

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

As we draw closer to November, we are bringing you previews of our Nov. 5 school board battleground elections—the ones we expect to have a meaningful effect on the balance of power or to be particularly competitive or compelling. Today, we’re highlighting the elections for the Cobb County School District school board, in Georgia, and the Sartell-St. Stephen School District board, in Minnesota.

Cobb County School District

Seven candidates are running for four seats on the Cobb County School District school board in Georgia on Nov. 5. 

Republicans have a 4-3 majority on the seven-seat board. Democratic incumbent Leroy Tre Hutchins (D) is running unopposed in District 3. The other three districts up for election each have Republican incumbents, though only two—in Districts 1 and 7—are running for re-election. A win for Democrats in at least one of those elections would change majority control of the school board, while a win for Republicans in all three would maintain the current 4-3 majority.

Georgia is one of five states where the law effectively allows for districts to hold partisan or nonpartisan elections. 

The budgetary process, book removals from libraries, and safety have been issues in the election. 

  • District 1: Incumbent Randy Scamihorn (R) faces challenger Vickie Benson (D). Benson ran against Scamihorn in the 2020 election and lost 57%-43%. Scamihorn, first elected in 2012, says his background as a veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force and as a former teacher and administrator in the county makes him the more qualified candidate. Benson, a science teacher, says she will prioritize improving the relationship between the board and families in the district.
  • District 5: Laura Judge (D) and John Cristadoro (R) are running in District 5. Both Judge and Cristadoro are veterans and parents of students in the district. Judge is a scientist who says she will prioritize financial transparency, literacy, and school safety. Cristadoro is the owner of a marketing firm who says he will prioritize school safety and maintaining the quality of academics.
  • District 7: Incumbent Brad Wheeler (R) faces challenger Andrew Cole (D). First elected in 2012, Wheeler is a former teacher and administrator in the district. Wheeler says he will prioritize school safety and supporting vocational training programs. Cole is a medical device manager and parent of children in the district. Cole says he is running to break the Republican board majority, which he says is not delivering results.

Cobb County is the second-largest district in Georgia, with an estimated 110,000 students.

Click here to learn more about this election.  

Sartell-St. Stephen School District

Six candidates are running for three at-large seats on the Sartell-St. Stephen School District board of education in Minnesota on Nov. 5. Incumbents Tricia Meling and Matthew Moehrle are running for re-election. Aaron Alexander, Michael Gruber, Michael Ringstad, and Chelsea Thielen are also running. 

Incumbent Jason Nies did not seek re-election. 

The board has six members. The district, located roughly 75 miles northwest of Minneapolis within the St. Cloud metropolitan area, enrolls around 4,100 students, making it the 51st-largest in Minnesota. 

According to the St. Cloud Times’ Corey Schmidt, “the board finds itself with a 3-3 ideology split and has created a contentious dynamic in local education-based politics.” 

The board voted 3-3 on approving 22 school staff contracts several times between February and July of this year, with the board members differing on whether to hold separate votes for each contract or ratify them collectively. The positions included HR Director and Director of Technology. 

Emily Larson, Jen Smith, and Scott Wenshau, who were elected in 2022 as a slate running on transparency, accountability and greater parental involvement in education, said the board should approve each contract individually. Interim Superintendent Tom Lee and the other board members Meling, Moehrle, and Nies supported approving the contracts collectively. On June 29, days before the contracts expired, the board voted to approve the contracts individually.  

The debate over approving the contracts has been an issue in the election this year. 

On Sept. 21, the Sartell Education Association (SEA), the local teachers union, endorsed incumbents Meling and Moehrle, as well as Thielen. In 2022, the SEA backed three candidates who ran against Larson, Smith, and Wenshau. 

Larson and Smith founded Kids Over Politics 748 in 2021. In 2023, the organization advocated for the removal of 11 books from Sartell-St. Stephen school libraries that it said contained pornographic material. The district ultimately removed two books from circulation— Him by Sarina Bowen and Verity by Colleen Hoover—in August 2023. 

Larson and Smith founded the organization following a 2021 survey the district distributed to students with the help of Equity Alliance of Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that said it partnered with districts to “address institutional equity.” The district called the survey an equity audit, and said the purpose was to help close achievement gaps between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. A district parent alleged on national television that a teacher instructed students to keep the survey from their parents.

We collected statements from campaign websites and media outlets in which the candidates explained why they’re running:

  • Gruber: “My family and I moved to Sartell in 2020 for the reasons most families do: it’s safe, quiet, and the schools have a good reputation. But several decisions were made by the school board and the district shortly after we moved here that we didn’t agree with, including the equity audit, the decision to continue masking into 2022, and the books controversy. I’m not running because I have a vendetta against public education. I’m running because I want to see a sense of democratic accountability restored to our public institutions.”
  • Meling: “The role of a board member is non-partisan, and it needs to get back to being just that. I think it would be great if everyone would remember that all involved want what’s best for students. Encouraging people to approach a problem directly with a teacher first and then following the chain of communication.
  • Moehrle: “During my first school board term, I’ve worked hard to be a good steward of our schools by being diligent in gathering information, listening to all voices in our community, and making thoughtful and reasoned decisions. I’m running for re-election because I value our schools, and believe my record on the school board over the last three years shows that I’ve done good work for the district and that I’ve become a trusted leader in the school district and greater community.”
  • Ringstad: “With just two weeks before the start of [the 2021-2022 school year], my wife and I made the extremely difficult decision to pull our children out of Sartell-St. Stephen schools – the district that we had moved here for. We refused to willingly send our daughter to Kindergarten knowing she would struggle to learn from a masked teacher. Learning more about how other districts managed to operate safely from the fall of 2019 through 2022, seemingly without as significant of disruptions as Sartell-St. Stephen left me very curious about the true motives of the extreme measures that were taken by the Sartell-St. Stephen school district.”
  • Thielen: “Our district needs to come together and resist the division caused by fringe groups. We need to restore confidence in our educators and administrators by trusting their expertise and supporting them fully. It’s essential to allow our teachers to work without harassment or micromanagement, demonstrating our commitment to their well-being and professional autonomy. We need to genuinely listen to the community majority, not polarizing factions, respecting their input when we ask for feedback, to create a more united and supportive environment.”

As of this writing, we have not yet found a campaign website for Alexander, and he has not responded to local media surveys. 

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

We’re highlighting Nov. 5 school board races in which all candidates have completed Ballotpedia’s Candidate Connection survey. The survey offers voters unique insight into the candidates on their ballot, especially for those running in local races. In the last week, we’ve received survey responses from candidates running for school board in the Los Angeles Unified School District, in California, the Wake County Public School System, in North Carolina, and elsewhere. 

Today, we’re highlighting survey responses from candidates running for school board in the Fontana Unified School District, in California. Joshua Christ and Danielle Holley are running to represent Area 4.

The district has about 34,000 students, making it the 22nd-largest in California. 

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

“Since the turn of the century, we’ve experienced the ever quickening pace of life and technology in the information age. The decades to come will bring more change than we can imagine at a pace few are prepared for. As a district, we must set forward-thinking policies that ready our students to adapt to these changes. We’ve seen the rise of a world where the entirety of human knowledge is accessible at our fingertips, but have lost our skill at deciphering fact from opinion. Preparing our students for the future means teaching them to think critically to seek the truth, fostering skills that can adapt to changing workforce requirements, and preparing them to be engaged stewards of our environment, diverse community, and democratic republic.”

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

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

  • “I am personally passionate about public safety, education, infrastructure, and fiscal responsibility. As the ‘Student Safety Candidate’, I believe that every student deserves the right to be safe at school and on the commute to and from.
  • A second area of public policy that I am also passionate about is improving our local infrastructure. I believe that this ties into safety as well. When our students walk to and from school, they need to have access to safe sidewalks, crosswalks, and roads. We can only maintain public safety and infrastructure if we are fiscally responsible and accountable. Students will receive a quality education in an environment that is safe, structurally sound, and financially sound.”

Click here to read the rest of Holley’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!