Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #137

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 teachers unions 
  • School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
  • These Republican-controlled states could create or expand private school choice policies in 2025
  • Extracurricular: education news and numbers from around the web
  • Candidate Connection survey

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On the issues: The debate over teachers unions

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.

The first teachers unions formed in Chicago in the late 19th century. Since then, they have been a prominent part of the conversation around K-12 public education. Proponents say unions provide teachers with higher pay and better working conditions, allowing them to focus on educating students. Critics, on the other hand, say unions too often advance members’ interests over students.

Michael Petrilli argues unions represent the interests of teachers and not students. Petrilli says unions create unnecessary barriers to becoming teachers, negotiate pay packages that deter new teachers, and fail to support rookies. He also says they often encourage less rigorous grading and disciplinary practices. 

Glenn Sacks says unions support new teachers with policies that limit their workloads and responsibilities in their first year. He says school board members and administrators (not unions) tend to overburden new teachers and enact requirements—such as those related to discipline and grading—that tie teachers’ hands. 

How much blame does the federal government deserve for America’s mediocre schools? | Michael J. Petrilli, Thompson Institute 

Elected school boards that are easily captured by the teachers unions and other adult interests. The teachers unions themselves. The education schools that train our teachers, principals, and other administrators. … [T]hat’s why we see such homogenization—and mediocrity—across the land. Perhaps it’s not quite so bad in red America because the unions are weaker there. But even where there are teacher ‘associations’ instead of ‘unions,’ we see human capital policies that no organization in its right mind would embrace voluntarily. These include barriers to entry that are weakly related to on-the-job performance; ineffective supports for new teachers and principals; lifelong tenure after just a few years in the profession; pay systems that pretend that every school and subject area demands the same salary; and compensation systems heavily weighted toward health care and retiree benefits instead of starting salaries—in other words, what veteran and retired teachers value, instead of what potential rookie teachers might want. And we see bad ideas flowing through our schools, like recent efforts to “reform grading” by never giving kids a zero, to ‘reform discipline’ by, well, not disciplining students, to teach reading by not explicitly teaching reading, to teach American history as a story of the oppressors versus the oppressed, and on and on ad nauseam.”

Don’t Blame Teachers Unions for Our Schools’ Problems | Glenn Sacks, RealClearEducation

“Hoover Institution research fellow Michael Petrilli adeptly identifies many of the problems afflicting American schools. In identifying the causes of these problems, he is…less adept. … Teachers unions are not the driving force behind these policies, and teachers generally have mixed emotions about them. … Petrilli is correct that the supports for novice teachers are inadequate. Too often rookies are thrown into a situation that requires an enormous amount of work and it is either sink or swim. Yet it is the teachers unions who fight for the supports these teachers need, and administrators and district leaders who often undermine them. … Petrilli criticizes schools for “not disciplining students” but this is simplistic. For one, there are often restrictions on transferring out students with special needs. Emotionally Disturbed students, for example, often can only be transferred if the incoming school has the same support available for the student as the school the student is leaving does. … Tenure is not the lifetime job guarantee critics like Petrilli imagine it to be. What it really means is teachers cannot be terminated without a legitimate reason and without due process.”

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

In 2024, 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. Below, you’ll find the last school board election Ballotpedia will cover this year:

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-person general election on Nov. 5 with 32.5% and 26% of the vote, respectively. 

De Urioste works for an advocacy firm that represents students. He completed Ballotpedia’s Candidate Connection survey. Stringer is a former teacher who works for a STEM nonprofit. 

Four seats were up for election this year. The Austin ISD is the sixth largest district in the state, with around 80,000 students.

Upcoming school board election filing deadlines

Ballotpedia researchers are hard at work collecting filing deadline information for our 2025 school board election coverage. 

Here are some upcoming filing deadlines for districts holding elections in the first part of 2025:

  • Districts in Wisconsin have filing deadlines on Dec. 31 for general elections on April 1, including:
    • DeForest Area School District
    • Madison Metropolitan School District
    • McFarland School District
    • Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District
    • Milwaukee Public Schools
  • The Anchorage School District, in Alaska, has a filing deadline on Jan. 24, 2025, for a general election on April 1. 

We’ll continue to update this section of the newsletter as we know more in the coming weeks. 

These Republican-controlled states could create or expand private school choice policies in 2025

Thirty-eight states will kick off their 2025 legislative sessions in the first three weeks of January. 

Lawmakers in Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas—all states with Republican trifectas—have signaled that implementing or expanding private school choice programs will be a top priority. Those programs provide students with taxpayer funding for private educational expenses, and include education savings accounts (ESA), vouchers, and tax credits.  

Why it matters: The number of students in private school choice programs has grown quickly in recent years as states—most led by Republicans—have created or expanded programs that accept all or nearly all students. However, proponents of those policies have failed in recent years to get legislation enacted in GOP-controlled states like Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas. In those states, rural Republican lawmakers have argued private school choice policies won’t benefit their districts, which tend to lack many private schools. 

  • Idaho, North Dakota, and Texas are the only states with Republican trifectas that have not enacted any private school choice programs. 
  • Tennessee, which has a Republican trifecta, passed a school choice pilot program in 2019 that applies only to eligible students in three counties. 

School choice shaped this year’s Republican primaries in Texas and Tennessee: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R), who were both unsuccessful in carrying out campaign promises to enact school choice bills, endorsed pro-school choice state House candidates in this year’s primaries. Twenty-one House Republicans voted in late 2023 with all 63 Democrats to oppose including a universal ESA program in a larger education funding bill. In Tennessee, the Republican-controlled House and Senate couldn’t agree on the details in a school choice bill before the 2024 session ended in April. 

  • Abbott endorsed 11 candidates in the March 5 primaries. Seven of Abbott’s candidates won. Abbott said, “The Texas Legislature now has enough votes to pass school choice. This is a victory for every Texas family across our great state. While we did not win every race we fought in, the overall message from this year’s primaries is clear: Texans want school choice. Opponents of school choice can no longer ignore the will of the people.”
  • State Rep. James Talarico (D) said, “The people of Texas need to push back, because if they allow for a universal voucher, we’re going to have millionaires and billionaires raiding our public education budget.”
  • In Tennessee, Lee endorsed three pro-school choice incumbents in the Aug. 1 primaries and three candidates running for open seats. Four of Lee’s candidates won, and all four won their general elections and have now been sworn into office. 

Lawmakers in Tennessee have filed school choice bills for the upcoming session, which begins Jan. 14. House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R) filed the bills on Nov. 6. The proposals are similar to the one that failed earlier this year, and would provide around 20,000 students with $7,000 to spend on private school tuition.

  • Lamberth said, “Public schools are the foundation of our educational system, and they’ll continue to be the option of choice for most families. This bill empowers parents — not the government — to make decisions about the unique needs and diverse interests of their children. Our students deserve no less.”
  • Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D) said, “We are strongly opposed to the defunding of our public schools, the redirection of tax dollars that are intended to support and fund our public education system.”
  • Republicans hold a 27-6 majority in the Senate and a 75-24 majority in the House.

In Idaho, state House Speaker Mike Moyle (R) said, “I still think that the school choice issue is not going away. I assure you that something will happen next year.”

  • In March, the House Revenue and Taxation Committee voted 8-9 to reject HB 447, which would have created a $50 million refundable tax credit for private school tuition. Seven Republicans joined with two Democrats to kill the bill. 
  • Idaho Federation for Children, a pro-school choice group with ties to the national group American Federation for Children (AFC), spent $301,826 in the May 21 primaries. The group opposed Reps. Melissa Durrant (R) and Kenny Wroten (R), who voted against advancing HB 447 out of committee. Both Durrant and Wroten lost their primaries to candidates who support school choice.   
  • In November, Idaho School Boards Association members voted 7,281-674 on a resolution opposing public funds being diverted to private schools. 

The big picture: Thirty-three states have enacted one or several private school choice programs, though the majority of those are limited to students with disabilities or from low-income families. 

  • Since 2021, 11 states have passed legislation making all or nearly all students eligible to participate in private school choice programs.  
  • According to EdChoice, an organization that advocates for private school choice policies, more than 1,000,000 students participated in programs that provided taxpayer funding for private educational expenses in 2024—about 2% of public school enrollment. 

The other side: Critics of private school choice programs say they primarily benefit children from wealthier families, while diverting resources from cash-strapped public school districts.

  • In November, voters in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kentucky rejected measures related to private school choice. In Nebraska, voters repealed legislation that created the state’s Opportunity Scholarships program in a 57-43% vote. Coloradans voted 52-48% against adding the phrase “each K-12 child has the right to school choice” to the state constitution. Kentuckians voted 65-35% to amend the constitution to allow the Kentucky General Assembly to provide state funding to students outside of public schools. President-elect Donald Trump (R) won Kentucky and Nebraska with an average of 62% of the vote. 
  • Click here to read our coverage of 2024 education-related ballot measures. 

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

This year, 564 school board candidates in 397 districts across the country completed our Candidate Connection survey. Throughout the year, we’ve featured many of these responses in this newsletter, giving you a look at the issues animating candidates and the themes around which these local elections have revolved.

Today, we’re highlighting surveys from two candidates who won in elections on Nov. 5—Crystal Puckett and Mekell Bell. 

Puckett won re-election to the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township school board, in Indiana, defeating Eric Young 65-35%. Puckett was first elected in 2020. The Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, with around 16,000 students, is the ninth-largest district in Indiana. 

Here’s how Puckett answered the question, “How would you support the diverse needs of your district’s students, faculty, staff, and community?”

“I would continue to implement and oversee our equity audit and Strategic plan, and continue to advocate for equitable policies that support every student’s access to high-quality education. This involves reviewing and revising policies to ensure they meet students’ needs and remove barriers that can prevent students from reaching their full potential.”

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

Bell was one of three candidates who won three at-large seats on the Laveen Elementary School District school board, in Arizona. Incumbent Jennifer Goetzke received 28%, while Kayla Parra and Bell received 27.8% and 25.3%, respectively. Robert Olmstead received 18.9% and did not win a seat. Laveen Elementary school district is the 34th-largest district in Arizona, with around 7,500 students. 

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

“I feel the three most pressing issues our school board faces is student safety, quality curriculum, and acquiring and retaining highly qualified, skilled teachers. As a parent and teacher myself, I see how these three issues directly impact students and staff and that focusing on them makes schools and the district as a whole better and more successful which leads to a greater community in general.”

Click here to read the rest of Bell’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!

Editor’s note: this post originally reported that filing deadlines for Missouri are on Dec. 31. It has been updated to reflect that the filing deadlines are for Wisconsin.