Empty Seats At Powerful Tables: The state of school boards in America

2022

EMPTY

S E AT S

AT POWERFUL TABLES The State of School Boards in America

A REPORT BY ETHAN ASHLEY AND CARRIE DOUGLASS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This report would not be possible without Erica Freeman’s wisdom and persistence and without the courage, experience, insights of our Fellows and focus group participants.

Thank you to our amazing SBP staff, mentors, board members and funders - your impact is changing the arc of history for kids.

T H A N K YO U.

TA B L E O F CO N T E N T S

LETTERS FROM THE FOUNDERS

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INTRODUCTION : SCHOOL BOARDS HAVE A PROBLEMATIC

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PAST, BUT A PROMISING FUTURE FOCUS GROUP AND SURVEY METHODOLOGY

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SCHOOL BOARDS DO NOT REPRESENT THE COMMUNITIES

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THEY SERVE SCHOOL BOARD LEADERSHIP IS OVERWHELMINGLY WHITE

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BOARD MEMBERS OF COLOR HAVE ACCESS TO FEWER

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SUPPORTS AND FACE GREATER BARRIERS TO SERVING ON SCHOOL BOARDS CALL TO ACTION : PEOPLE

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CALL TO ACTION : POWER

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CALL TO ACTION : PROFESSIONALIZATION

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CONCLUSION

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ABOUT SCHOOL BOARD PARTNERS

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END NOTES

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LETTERS FROM THE FOUNDERS school board policy provided the bussing to get me there. A school board policy helped me earn college credit in high school and enroll at Howard University with enough credits to graduate in three years. Unfortunately, while life-changing for me, these policies benefitted only a handful of students.

Because these policies didn’t apply to every school and every student, my friends and peers — mostly kids of color from low-income communities — were not afforded the educational opportunities I received. Instead, they were left to attend severely under-resourced schools. This injustice results from elected school board members’ decisions, which continue to perpetuate the policies and practices that ensure students of color receive fewer opportunities, fewer resources, heightened scrutiny, and lower-quality educational experiences.

ETHAN My story is about defying the odds. I was born to a single mother in Compton, California, and graduated from high school at 16, college at 19, and law school at 22. I’ve worked on Capitol Hill and with historic civil rights organizations. Many people want to believe that I succeeded because of hard work, grit, and a little luck. That imagined story is more acceptable than the truth: I was given opportunities to succeed because of policies and decisions made by school board members.

A school board policy allowed me to attend a magnet school two hours from my home and a

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With three children of my own, I ran and was elected twice to my local school board, serving as board president during the pandemic. I cofounded School Board Partners because I know firsthand the power of school boards to improve education for children of color. I know that with the right policies, my children, their peers, and students of color across the country will thrive.

AT SBP, OUR GOAL IS THAT MY STORY BECOMES THE NORM RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION.

different. The student enrolled in the Montessori school, which was characterized by small class sizes, high expectations, proven curriculum, and integrated social-emotional learning, thrived academically and socially. His brother, on the other hand, struggled in an overcrowded, dilapidated school with mostly beginner teachers, outdated materials, and a lack of socialemotional support. He was routinely suspended even though he was only in the first grade. The students in these two schools were essentially the same, but the systems they experienced were vastly different.

CARRIE I grew up in a small, rural, predominantly white community.

AS A STUDENT, I DID NOT UNDERSTAND THAT I WAS AFFORDED OPPORTUNITIES AND ADVANTAGES IN SCHOOL THAT ARE SYSTEMATICALLY DENIED TO OTHERS. It was not until I began teaching in a diverse tuition-free urban Montessori school in Boston that I recognized the structural inequality and racism embedded in the American education system.

While teaching, I lived in public housing next door to a Black family with two young boys. Based on a lottery, the youngest was able to attend the Montessori school where I taught. His brother was assigned to the under-resourced neighborhood public school.

Although they were only one grade apart, the education each boy received was vastly

Witnessing how attending different elementary schools put these brothers’ lives on dramatically divergent paths opened my eyes to the gross injustices perpetuated by our nation’s public school systems.

This simple revelation inspired the next 15 years of my career as a teacher, school leader, district leader, education funder, and nonprofit leader. However, it wasn’t until I ran for the school board in my hometown and began voting on facilities projects, budget decisions, attendance zones, and teacher contracts that I finally realized it was school board members in Boston1 who had decided that underinvestment in that neighborhood elementary school was acceptable, while public schools in other wealthier, whiter neighborhoods were some of the best in the country.

For the past five and a half years, over two terms on the school board (including serving as board chair during the pandemic), I’ve worked to recruit, support, and learn from school board members of color and other marginalized identities. Together, we’ve worked to begin dismantling the status quo in my community that has long perpetuated injustice and inequity. Through my work with School Board Partners, I hope to support and train other board members across the country to pursue similar change in their communities and learn from the experiences and expertise of education leaders of color. Based on these experiences, I continue to evolve my own thinking and understanding of how to dismantle systemic racism in schools and ensure that all students receive highquality educational opportunities and support.

I N PA R T N E R S H I P,

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S C H O O L B OA R D S H AV E A P R O B L E M AT I C PA S T, B U T A P R O M I S I N G F U T U R E .

Only 38% of current school board members surveyed plan to run for reelection.2 Compare this with data from 2016 school board elections, indicating that more than 70% of incumbents ran for reelection.3

This looming “Great Resignation” from the boards governing America’s schools presents an opportunity to recruit and train new, more diverse leaders to help push school boards to enact the policies and practices necessary to dismantle systemic racism in education.

To successfully recruit and retain new board members who can lead this critical work, we must understand current board members — what drove them to run for office, their experiences on the board, and what factors influence their reelection decisions. We used the findings from this study to construct a framework to guide the process of reimagining school boards.

The steps involved are recruiting people who share identities and experiences with the communities they serve; wielding power to effectively govern in a manner

that supports schools and advances justice; and professionalizing boards by equipping members with the knowledge, skills, and resources needed to close the gaps in equity and excellence that persist across our country.

American public schools are grossly inequitable.6 Students of color disproportionately7 attend underresourced schools that are more likely to be staffed by less experienced teachers.8 They are provided with less access to advanced courses and other educational opportunities.9 As a result of this systemic injustice, students of color are, on average, several grade levels behind their peers.10 This leads students of color to graduate from high school,11 enroll in, and complete postsecondary degrees at lower rates than their peers.12 In short, we do not provide students of color the same caliber of education we offer to white students. The consequences of this echo throughout their lives.

Our nation’s school boards played a critical role in establishing these structural inequities. Following Brown vs. Board of Education, they enacted policies to continue “de facto” segregation rather than embrace integration and racial equity, as intended by law. They built on redlined communities to create segregated school district boundaries. They developed school finance systems that provided greater resources to the wealthiest, and typically whitest, communities.

They approved teacher contracts that sent the most experienced teachers disproportionately to wealthier, whiter schools.

W H AT I S S Y S T E M I C O R I N S T I T U T I O N A L R A C I S M ?

Policies, rules, practices, etc. that are a usual part of the way a society or organization works, and that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race.4 When most people think of racism, they think of individual racist acts, for example, a manager using a racial slur with an employee. An example of institutional racism is when, across thousands of job openings, job applicants with a white sounding name are 50% more likely to be called for an interview than job applicants with a black sounding name.5 We can presume that the vast majority of hiring managers would not consider themselves to be racist nor would use a racial slur, and yet racism is so deeply embedded in society and organizations that institutional racism continues to have a harmful impact on people of color.

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INTRODUCTION

Today, school boards continue to perpetuate these inequities. The policies that maintain systemic racism are deeply embedded in K-12 education, and many people, including school board members, do not recognize them as discriminatory. Rather, they likely see them as business as usual — a normal and acceptable way of administering public education.

School boards represent a center of power and policymaking with the potential to disrupt these historical patterns of discrimination and systemic racism. Given their authority and obligation to all students in their communities, school boards have an opportunity and an urgent responsibility to evolve from institutions that too often protect and promulgate education injustices to those that actively identify and deconstruct the racist policies and practices harming students, their families, and their communities.

Simply put, school boards created these policies, and only school boards can change them.

Yet, most of the country’s school boards remain committed to maintaining the status quo, intentionally or unintentionally, through inaction. To realize their potential as antiracist institutions that actively identify and redress racist systems, policies, and structures, school boards must diversify their membership and their leadership. Increasing the proportion of school board members who share identities, experiences, and histories with the communities they serve matters. Leaders of color raise the concerns and needs of communities of color that are so often overlooked, minimized, or, in the worst cases, ignored and exacerbated. And board members of color bring different perspectives, orientations, and motivations to school district administration. They ask different questions and elevate different challenges facing students, teachers, and schools. A more diverse school board helps to make the invisible visible.

While increasing diversity on school boards is necessary, it is insufficient to drive them to deconstruct systemic racism in education. School board members also need greater support, training, and development. Most are unpaid or underpaid for their work, have little experience campaigning, and lack access to the kind of training and infrastructure necessary to develop policies and build momentum for meaningful change. Indeed, school board members are typically ill equipped to identify and ultimately reform entrenched policies that produce disparities based on race, class, gender, or disability.

This lack of infrastructure and support leads to stagnant policies and high turnover among board members. The result is little or no systemic change to improve student outcomes and supports.

Given school boards’ authority and central role in shaping education policy, they are underutilized, underdeveloped agents for change. We conducted both focus groups and a large-scale, first-of-itskind survey of school board members to better understand who they are, their priorities for their districts, the challenges they face, their plans for the future, the support they need, and their ideas about the impact of systemic racism on their districts.

Our survey respondents included elected school board members from across the country. In our analysis, we paid particular attention to members of color. This focus allows us to elevate education leaders from habitually marginalized communities and spotlight their perspectives.

G A I N I N G A G R E AT E R U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F T H E E X P E R I E N C E S A N D C H A L L E N G E S FAC I N G B OA R D M E M B E R S O F C O LO R I S C R I T I C A L TO B O O S T I N G THEIR RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION AND M OT I VAT I N G S C H O O L B OA R D S TO E F F E C T I V E LY A D D R E S S S T R U C T U R A L R AC I S M A N D I N E Q U I T Y I N E D U C AT I O N.

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HOW WE THINK ABOUT ANTI-RACISM ON SCHOOL BOARDS The term “anti-racism” has become politicized, but it’s a simple concept that is easy to support once it’s understood.

Most Americans today would consider themselves to be “not racist.” However, when dealing with calcified, entrenched policies - as is the case with systemic racism in education - it’s not enough to be “not racist” – individuals must actively work to change systemic and institutional racism through policies and practices. That’s being anti-racist.

Antiracism is defined as “the practice of actively identifying and opposing racism.”13 AT S C H O O L B O A R D P A R T N E R S , W E B E L I E V E T H E R O L E O F A N T I R A C I S T S C H O O L BOARD MEMBERS INCLUDES A 4 STEP PROCESS:

REVIEW A VARIETY OF DATA POINTS DISAGGREGATED BY SUBGROUPS AND IDENTIFY ANY DATA THAT SHOWS A PERSISTENT DISPARITY BASED ON DEMOGRAPHICS

(i.e. race/ethnicity, gender, income, disability, language) Data disparities might exist in student outcome data (i.e. test scores), access data (i.e. AP class enrollment), discipline data (i.e. expulsion rates), experience data (i.e. student surveys) or input data (i.e. teacher quality). 14

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE STAKEHOLDERS EXPERIENCING THE NEGATIVE DISPARITY, INVESTIGATE WHICH POLICIES OR PRACTICES MIGHT BE CREATING OR PERPETUATING THAT DISPARITY. This might include research, additional data analysis, surveys, focus groups or interviews. This work will likely be carried out by the Superintendent and District staff at the direction of the Board.

If a data disparity is not persistent or statistically significant - i.e. one science class has fewer girls some years and more girls other years, all within a normal range of difference year to year - then it probably does not need to be addressed. But when data shows there is a persistent and significant disparity - i.e. all advanced science classes significantly under-enroll girls year after year - it indicates there is a policy or practice leading to the disparity that needs to be changed, since we know that girls are just as good at science as boys.

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F O R E X A M P L E , a School Board might examine data about AP course enrollment, and find that

over multiple years, enrollment in AP courses by Black students is significantly lower than the overall Black student population percentage. After looking at additional data points and meeting with Black students, their families, and their teachers, District staff learn that Black students and their families are less likely to understand the benefits of AP classes on college attainment, less likely to be recommended for AP courses by their teachers, and are less likely to be enrolled in classes that prepare students for AP courses in younger grades. The Board passes a new policy to provide governance goals and guardrails to address these root causes and asks the Superintendent to report on these data points each quarter so they can quickly determine if the new policy is having the intended impact, or is having any unintended consequences and needs to be revised again.

PASS NEW SCHOOL BOARD POLICIES OR CHANGE EXISTING POLICIES TO ADDRESS THE IDENTIFIED DISPARITY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH STAKEHOLDERS. Utilize governance levers, such as goals and guardrails and the superintendent evaluation, to hold the system accountable for change.

CONTINUE TO TRACK THE DATA AND MONITOR THE POLICY EXECUTION TO DETERMINE IF THE POLICY CHANGE IS HAVING THE INTENDED IMPACT ON THE IDENTIFIED DATA DISPARITY. Continue to adjust policy as needed until the negative disparity based on demographics no longer exists.

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BASED ON THIS RESEARCH, WE IDENTIFIED THREE KEY C H A L L E N G E S T H AT S C H O O L B O A R D S M U S T M E E T T O R E A L I Z E T H E I R P O T E N T I A L A S J U S T A N D E Q U I TA B L E I N S T I T U T I O N S .

School boards do not represent the communities they serve.

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Across a number of dimensions, school board members are less diverse than the communities they serve.

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School board leadership is overwhelmingly white.

Members of color are more likely to voice missing perspectives on equity, addressing systemic racism, and closing achievement gaps.

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Bringing a new, often overlooked point of view impels many people of color to run for the school board in the first place.

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Members of color are more likely than white members to view systemic racism as an ongoing problem the board must address.

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Members of color are more likely to prioritize policies focused on equity, raising student outcomes, and closing achievement gaps.

Members of color have access to fewer supports and face greater barriers to serving on school boards.

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Members of color have lower access to necessary campaign infrastructure and are more likely to face socioeconomic barriers to continuing to serve on school boards.

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Members of color often have insufficient or inequitable access to training and resources to support their work.

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B A S E D O N T H E S E F I N D I N G S , W E P R O P O S E A S T R AT E G I C F R A M E W O R K G R O U P E D I N T O T H R E E C AT E G O R I E S : P E O P L E , P O W E R , A N D P R O F E S S I O N A L I Z AT I O N . T H E S E S T R AT E G I E S A R E M U T U A L LY R E I N F O R C I N G , A N D PURSUING THEM TOGETHER AMPLIFIES A BOARD’S EFFECTIVENESS AND THE BENEFITS TO STUDENTS.

PEOPLE

POWER

P R O F E S S I O N A L I Z AT I O N

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We believe this is a pivotal moment for school boards. The fact that only 38% of surveyed board members plan to run for reelection presents an opportunity to recruit and train new members, as well as retain and support existing members who are truly representative of the communities they serve and committed to deconstructing systemic racism in education.

We have identified ways in which the power and potential of school boards can be wielded to enact meaningful change, advance justice in

education, and break the cycles of repression.

We urge districts and cities to strategically invest in school boards, providing support and resources to remove the barriers to representative participation in school governance. We envision a future in which all school board members advocate for education justice and challenge directly the institutional and structural racism that has plagued our public schools for generations.

We need to recruit school board members who are representative and have shared experiences with the students and families they serve. We want members who, regardless of lived experience, understand the need for active antiracist leadership. To accomplish this, communities must develop a robust, well-supported education leader pipeline.

Once the right people are in place, school boards must govern effectively by finding the right balance between supporting superintendents and holding them accountable on behalf of the community. Moreover, school boards must wield their authority and influence to implement high-impact, antiracist policies that address historic harms and dismantle oppressive practices.

School board members require high-quality training, resources, and support to be able to dismantle systemic racism, govern effectively, engage with their communities, and manage multimillion-dollar budgets. Providing this critical support and training will boost the short- and long-term effectiveness and sustainability of school boards and enable them to undertake the work of education justice. Indeed, transformational change requires sustained leadership, and high-quality training and support helps effective board members to serve multiple terms.

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FOCUS GROUPS AND SURVEY METHODOLOGY Despite their important role in leading public schools, very little data collection and research have been conducted about the nation’s school board members.

Indeed, this survey is the first to analyze specifically the experiences and perspectives of school board members of color.

For that reason, the results of this survey offer critical insights into the challenges and the opportunities present in the country’s school boards.

We surveyed nearly 675 members from across the country who held office before November 2021.15 The survey was conducted from January 12 to January 25, 2022, and was limited to those board members representing districts where the student body is at least 20% students of color. We set up the survey this way to ensure that we collected the characteristics, experiences, and views of school board members serving students of color.

Our sample is geographically diverse: 20% of respondents came from the Midwest, 18% from the Northeast, 31% from the South, and 32% from the West. Our sample included at least one board member from 47 states. The sample includes respondents who identify from among diverse racial and ethnic groups.

The survey asked school board members 29 questions that fit into five high-level themes: The members’ characteristics; their district’s landscape; their experience with elections; specifics about the board resources and supports available to board members; and their views on their districts’ most pressing issues. The survey revealed who 14

serves on school boards, the barriers they face, their priorities, the impact of systemic racism on education governance, and whether they plan to run for reelection. Perhaps most important, by disaggregating the survey results we can identify how experiences and perspectives differ by race and ethnicity and locale.

In addition to the survey results and to provide greater depth about school board member experiences and perspectives, we conducted focus groups of approximately 30 people, including current and former School Board Partners fellows,16 school superintendents, and representatives of city and national organizations that support school board members. The takeaways from the focus groups, combined with the survey results, capture the current climate and composition of America’s school boards and point to key areas for growth and improvement for these boards to fulfill their promise of an effective and just education system.

Throughout this paper, the reported percentages from the survey are based on the share of school board members who answered each question and not necessarily the entire survey sample. This is because some questions were not required of each respondent or were conditionally displayed based on the answer to a previous question. For example, a respondent who agreed that systemic racism exists saw a follow-up question about the school board’s responsibility to address it. To ensure transparency, we published the n-size, or the number of school board members who responded to the question, for each graph and table in the paper.

Although all of the results are interesting, we focus on results that are statistically significant.

School Board Partners Fellowship is a two-year no-cost program for diverse elected school board members. It includes three annual in-person convenings, monthly webinars, coaching, and access to a wealth of resources.

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SCHOOL BOARDS DO NOT REPRESENT THE COMMUNITIES THEY SERVE. Representation matters. It is as simple as that.

Racially diverse school boards are more likely to distribute funds equitably.17 Indeed, seating even a single board member of color increases a district’s investment in schools serving primarily students of color.18 In California, studies found that school boards with at least one Hispanic board member led to greater student achievement, more diverse school leadership, and lower teacher turnover.19 Similar studies in Florida found that more racially diverse school boards lowered suspension rates overall and significantly reduced race-based disparities in school discipline.20 Our survey results build on this research. We found that the diversity — or lack thereof — of school boards influences how they see their districts, and informs whom they listen to and how they perceive the challenges and opportunities facing their districts.

Across a number of dimensions, school boards are less diverse than the communities they serve.

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The composition of school boards whose members we surveyed differed, often significantly, from the communities they serve.

Compared with the students in their districts, the board members were more likely to be white, less likely to have a disability, less likely to identify as LGBTQIA+, and less likely to speak a language other than English at home.

As shown in Figure 1, 64% of surveyed school board members were white, compared with a student enrollment that is only 46% white. In other words, the school boards are nearly 40% whiter than the students they serve. Students are 55% more likely to have a disability than a board member (14% of students report having a disability compared with 9% of board members).

LGBTQIA+ students are the most severely underrepresented among the school board members we surveyed: Only 6% of members identify as LGBTQIA+ compared with 16% of students.

Finally, 23% of students report speaking a language other than English at home compared with 13% of board members.

WE HAVE ONE OR TWO BOARD MEMBERS W H O U N D E R S TA N D T H E I M P O RTA N C E O F R E P R E S E N TAT I O N – W H O U N D E R S TA N D T H AT N O M AT T E R W H E R E T H E C H I L D C O M E S F R O M OR WHERE THE INDIVIDUAL BOARD MEMBER C O M E S F R O M , T H AT T H E I R R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y I S TO I N C R E A S E AC A D E M I C AC H I E V E M E N T,

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E N S U R E W E H AV E A B U D G E T T H AT I S E Q U I TA B L E , A N D T H AT W E H O L D T H E D I R E C TO R O F S C H O O L S AC C O U N TA B L E . A S A B OA R D M E M B E R YO U HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPERIENCING THE INJUSTICE AND DO THINGS W I T H T H E M R A T H E R T H A N T O T H E M .”

- School board member from the focus groups 17

School boards should reflect the diversity of the students and communities they serve. Yet in our sample, only 37% of white board members agree that it is important that the racial and ethnic composition of the board mirror the community it serves. Among board members of color, 74% agree. The fact that a majority of white board members fail to see the importance of representation could be why discriminatory policies have remained intact for so many decades: Many white district leaders minimize or simply overlook the experiences of people of color.

They fail to see how policies, even those that appear to be race neutral, can have a disparate impact on people based on their race.

In addition, we found a significant disparity in the age of school board members based on race. As shown in Figure 2, nearly 60% of people of color on school boards are under 55 years of age, while nearly 60% of white board members are over 55 years of age.

For comparison , the average K-12 parent is 36-49 years old.21 The impact of this age discrepancy is seen throughout many other data points in this report regarding the barriers to running for and staying in office. Finally, we found that school board members of color are more likely to have children in the school district they represent (57% vs 45%) and more likely to have attended school in the district where they serve (52% vs 45%.)22 All of these data points come together to show that across dimensions of race, language, age,

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and direct connection to the district, board members of color are more representative of the students and families they serve.

Leadership that does not share the lived experiences of those it purports to represent calcifies the structures, policies, and practices that create and sustain educational inequities. The overrepresentation by white leaders on school boards across the country, among other things, has prolonged the unjust treatment of students of color and contributes to the perpetuation of race-based disparities in the quality of education provided to students.

Diverse and inclusive school boards whose membership reflects the identities held by the people they serve are an essential element of dismantling racist policies and supporting the success of all students. That said, the presence of representative school board members is insufficient to ensure the interests of all students are adequately addressed.

Furthermore, the presence of board members of color, or those with other marginalized identities, does not absolve the obligation of every school board member to dedicate their work to identifying and dismantling the policies that produce inequities and increasing achievement and opportunities for all students. In fact, white board members should be careful not to rely on members of color to be the only members advocating for antiracist policies.

SCHOOL BOARD LEADERSHIP IS O V E R W H E L M I N G LY W H I T E .

People of color are under-represented on school boards. The challenges and consequences of underrepresentation are compounded by the fact that people of color are even less likely to serve as board president or chair. As shown in Figure 3, of those surveyed, only 27% of board members of color have served as president or chair, compared with 46% of white board members.

Indeed, white members are almost twice as likely to be board president as members of color.

The board president has significant power to set the board’s agenda and priorities, as well as to manage the district superintendent. The underrepresentation of board members of color in leadership magnifies the problem of underrepresentation on the board as a whole.

Furthermore, it encumbers the board’s ability to unravel racist policies that make up the status quo and makes it more difficult for the board to recognize and address the specific needs of students and families of color.

Of course, board members of all races and backgrounds can be trained to recognize systemic inequality and can acquire the knowledge and skills to address it. But for school boards to truly become antiracist agents of structural change in education, they must become more diverse in membership and leadership. This is because board members of color elevate different perspectives, emphasize different priorities, and are far more likely to see addressing systemic racism as a core responsibility of the board.

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MEMBERS OF COLOR VOICE MISSING P E R S P E C T I V E S O N E Q U I T Y, A D D R E S S I N G SYSTEMIC RACISM, AND CLOSING ACHIEVEMENT GAPS.

Most people decide to serve on their local school board to do right by children and to support their schools and communities. Despite these good intentions, inequities persist. Issues systemically harming students of color go unaddressed, and communities of color and under-resourced communities often remain overlooked and unheard. In many cases, recognizing these unfortunate facts motivates people of color to seek to join their local school boards. Once seated, these members bear the dual responsibility of doing the job itself and focusing attention and concern on the structural and quotidian challenges facing communities of color that are so often ignored.

Bringing a new, often overlooked point of view drives many people of color to run for school board in the first place.

While there are common themes motivating people to join a school board, we nevertheless found that people of color join school boards for different reasons than white people.

As shown in Table 1, 33% of board members of color reported that the primary reason they joined the school board was to provide a voice, experience, and perspective that are missing on the board. Only 19% of white board members gave that as their primary reason for running for the school board. This discrepancy may be explained

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somewhat by the fact that school board members are disproportionately white, which likely limits the feeling of underrepresentation.

At 24%, the second most common thing that motivated people of color to join their school board was to push the district to serve students better. Combined, 57% of the surveyed board members of color indicated that they joined the board to provide a missing perspective or improve how the district serves its students. For white board members, these reasons totaled only 40%.

The most popular reason white members ran for school board was to give back to the community.

While the desire to give back is admirable, it may not signify a focus on advancing equity and justice or improving outcomes for students.

Indeed, only 21% of white board members — the second least commonly given reason — indicated that serving students more effectively drew them to the board. Only 15% of members of color cited giving back to the community as the reason they joined the school board.

As we demonstrated earlier, school boards are predominantly and disproportionately white.

This may be due, at least in part, to the fact that white people are recruited to serve on the school board at higher rates than people of color. In our survey, 23% of white respondents indicated that the primary reason they joined the board was because they were recruited, compared with 19% of board members of color. This slight, but statistically significant, gap in recruitment reinforces the need to focus on recruiting people of color to join their local school boards.

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I ’ M T H E M O T H E R O F T W O , W H I C H I S T R U LY THE REASON WHY I RAN. MY OLDEST IS

11. HE IS ON THE SPECTRUM, AND WE‘VE H A D P R E T T Y D I F F I C U LT E X P E R I E N C E S I N T H E S C H O O L D I S T R I C T. F O R M E , S P E A K I N G AT S C H O O L B OA R D M E E T I N G S TO R A I S E MY CONCERNS SHOULD BE PART OF THE P R O C E S S , R I G H T ? B U T U N F O R T U N AT E LY, INSTEAD OF FEELING LIKE I WAS HEARD, I WA S T H A N K E D F O R B E I N G A N I N V O LV E D PA R E N T. I I M M E D I AT E LY L O O K E D AT THE BOARD IN DISBELIEF AND ANGER. I R E A L I Z E D T H AT T H E R E A S O N T H E Y S AW ME AS NOTHING MORE THAN A BROWN MOTHER IS BECAUSE THERE WAS NO R E P R E S E N TAT I O N W I T H I N T H E S C H O O L B OA R D. I R A N TO C H A N G E T H AT. ” - School board member from the focus groups

M E M B E R S O F C O L O R D I S P R O P O R T I O N AT E LY V I E W S Y S T E M I C RACISM AS AN ONGOING PROBLEM THE BOARD MUST ADDRESS. People of color primarily run for school board to voice the concerns of their communities and bring an overlooked perspective to district leadership. Serving on the school board is seen as a “high stakes’’ responsibility for these members to achieve the change necessary for students of color and other systemically marginalized students to thrive. To be clear, some white board members voice the same aspirations, but the majority went to work on the school board for different reasons and don’t experience negative disparities personally.

To enact antiracist policies, school board members must understand the role of systemic racism in advancing race-based gaps in opportunity and achievement in education. They must believe challenging systemic racism is central to the work of school boards.

The good news is that according to our survey, 83% of school board members recognize there is at least some connection between this country’s history of racism and public education. Yet only 53%, a slim majority, of board members believe that systemic racism exists in schools today and that it creates challenges for their district that need to be addressed. And, as shown in Figure 4, board members of color were far more likely to believe systemic racism is a problem that must be addressed.

Among those surveyed, 73% of board members of color believe that systemic racism continues to harm students

of color (see the coral and peach values). Conversely, only 45% of white board members share that view.

On the positive side, this 45% indicates that among the nation’s white school board members there are many potential allies and accomplices in the work of dismantling systemic racism. Nevertheless, since white people comprise the lion’s share of school boards, this means that most school board members do not believe that systemic racism continues to plague America’s schools or that school boards have a responsibility to deconstruct those structures.

The divergence in mindset between a slight minority of white board members and most members of color underscores the need to support more board members of color in serving on school boards. It also emphasizes the urgent need to provide critical support and training so that all board members are familiar with the history of systemic racism, its ongoing impacts on students and families, and how school boards can redress those wrongs.

The good news is that of the board members who believe systemic racism exists and needs to be addressed, 91% of them believe school boards should play an active role in addressing systemic racism. This means that thousands of school board members are ready to benefit from a road map and resources to do just that.

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M E M B E R S O F C O L O R A R E M O R E L I K E LY T O P R I O R I T I Z E P O L I C I E S F O C U S E D O N E Q U I T Y, R A I S I N G S T U D E N T O U T C O M E S , AND CLOSING ACHIEVEMENT GAPS. School board members’ identities and what motivated them to join the school board influences the issues they prioritize. We asked respondents to identify the top five issues their boards should focus on over the next five years. The following were the top three issues across all board members: • • •

Mental and physical health and wellness of students and staff Student achievement and outcomes Teacher shortages and pipeline

These priorities reflect long-standing challenges in public education that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, board members of color and white board members diverge when prioritizing issues concerning equity, antiracism, and opportunity gaps.

As shown in Table 2, 39% of all board members responded that focusing on the achievement of students of color and low-income students should be a top priority. However, only 33% of white board members mentioned that as a top priority compared with 56% of board members of color. After supporting students’ mental and physical health — a priority likely driven by the global pandemic — the achievement of students of color and low-income students was the most urgent

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issue for board members of color. Among board members of color serving in cities, improving education for habitually marginalized students was an even more pressing matter.

Equity and antiracism were top priorities for 41% of board members of color, making it, for them, the fifth most important matter facing the board. Overall, only 28% of white board members identified equity and antiracism as a critical matter, ranking it as the ninth most important issue out of the 13 issue areas surveyed.

Next, we wanted to know what, if any, barriers exist to making progress on the priorities identified by surveyed board members. Alarmingly, despite the consistent poor performance of the American public school system, nearly one-third of white board members indicated that there are no barriers to improving education, compared with only 12% of board members of color. Indeed, as shown in Figure 5, board members of color were more likely to identify barriers to achieving progress nearly across the board. Power dynamics was the barrier most commonly cited by board members of color. Board members of color were also far more likely than their white peers to indicate that lack of board diversity and issues around pay, capacity, or resources were significant barriers to progress.

S C H O O L B O A R D M E M B E R S D O N O T I N N AT E LY P O S S E S S T H E KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE NEEDED TO RECOGNIZE THE MANY S T R U C T U R A L A N D S Y S T E M I C B A R R I E R S T O I M P R O V I N G E D U C AT I O N Q U A L I T Y A N D E Q U I T Y. N O R D O T H E Y H A V E T H E I N H E R E N T S K I L L S T O D E V I S E P O L I C I E S A N D P R A C T I C E S T O O V E R C O M E T H O S E O B S TA C L E S .

T H E S E T H I N G S M U S T B E L E A R N E D . U N F O R T U N AT E LY, T H E R E I S I N S U F F I C I E N T O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L I N F R A S T R U C T U R E T O R E C R U I T, S U P P O R T, A N D T R A I N S C H O O L B O A R D M E M B E R S , P A R T I C U L A R LY MEMBERS OF COLOR. 25

BOARD MEMBERS OF COLOR HAVE ACCESS TO F E W E R S U P P O RT S A N D FAC E G R E AT E R BARRIERS TO SERVING ON SCHOOL BOARDS. For school board members of color, the job of serving on the board and advancing education equity is made more challenging by politics and by the composition and structure of the board. Those challenges are compounded by situational barriers that disproportionately affect members of color.

For example, in our survey, board members of color indicated that they have inadequate access to organizations that support running for office and provide critical training to school board members.

Moreover, elected board members of color are more likely to leave their positions due to conflicting responsibilities or because the engagement is not sustainable in their lives. White board members, on the other hand, are much more likely to leave simply because they’re retiring.

As we mentioned previously, only 38% of school board members said that they plan to run for reelection. The high turnover rate underlines the challenge of building more robust infrastructure to recruit, elect, train, support, and reelect new and returning board members to undertake the difficult work of education justice.

Members of color have lower access to necessary campaign infrastructure and are more likely to face structural barriers to continuing to serve on school boards.

School boards are critical to communities. And yet, historically, school board elections have had relatively low voter participation and have been largely noncompetitive. This trend is changing.23 School board elections are increasingly competitive and expensive, particularly in larger districts. Rising costs and the growing visibility of school board elections combine to disadvantage less wealthy, younger, and less politically established candidates. These candidates disproportionately are people of color.

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This suggests a need for a greater investment in the infrastructure available to recruit, train, and support candidates of color to serve on their local school boards. This raises the question: What kind of organizational support exists in your community, and do you make use of their services?

As shown in Figure 6,

in every instance board members of color were more likely than white board members to indicate that an organization that provides needed services does not exist in their communities, and that they would have benefitted from more support in that area.

Among the board members of color we surveyed, 47% said their community lacks, but they would benefit from, organizations that train people to run for school board. Another 40% said that although such organizations were absent from their communities, they would be very helpful.

In general, most school board members indicated that these five areas of support were not available to them (coral and peach). And yet, as shown above, board members who do have access to these organizations in their communities often take advantage of some of them (light blue).

Across every category, board members of color were more likely than white board members to say they did not have access to the support and could have benefitted from more support in that area (coral). In contrast, across every category, white board members were more likely to say that they didn’t believe more support in that area would be helpful (peach). Again, this is likely a reflection that the status quo is working better for white board members than it is for board members of color.

In short, school board members, particularly members of color, want — but often do not have — access to critical training and support to help them execute their responsibilities more effectively. For school boards to realize their full potential to redress historic injustices and advance equity, there must be greater investments in the training and development of school board candidates and seated members.

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PEOPLE OF COLOR, IN PARTICULAR, DO N OT H AV E ACC E S S I N G E N E R A L TO T H O S E KINDS OF LEADERSHIP PROGRAMS. THUS, ACCESS AND EXPOSURE TO LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT WOULD BE GROUNDBREAKING. IT WOULD BE GAME CHANGING.

— School board member from an SBP focus group

According to our survey, most current school board members are not committed to running for reelection.

As shown in Figure 7, the factors discouraging board members from running for reelection are different for members of color than for white members. Setting aside “other,” the most common response for members of color was personal or family responsibilities (20%). For white board members, the most common response was retirement (22%).

For every other reason except involuntary departure, board members of color are more likely to cite a situational factor as their reason for not running for reelection. For white board members, “other” and retirement account for 54% of the reported reasons why they will not run for the school board again. These findings suggest that people of color face meaningful barriers to remaining on the school board. For instance, board members of color tend to be younger than white board members, so they may have a greater need to focus on their families and/or careers.

Although it is not among the most commonly provided

reasons a board member will not run for reelection, members of color are more than twice as likely as white members to cite insufficient compensation for serving on the board. In our work with dozens of school board members across the country, we find that it is difficult for many board members to balance a full-time job with unpaid or underpaid board service, which typically amounts to 10 – 30 hours of work per week. Among all respondents, only 54% report that they are paid a salary or stipend for their service.

As shown on the following page in Table 3, 84% of those who are compensated for their work on the board report receiving annual salaries or stipends of $10,000 or less.

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Despite the many barriers they face and the other priorities that compete for their time, board members of color are more likely to say that they will run for reelection (44%) than white board members (36%). This is a testament to their dedication and perseverance. But their persistence notwithstanding, there simply is insufficient supportive infrastructure to help all members —particularly members of color — run for and serve effectively on school boards.

THROUGH OUR WORK WITH SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS, WE’VE IDENTIFIED SIX PRIMARY LEVERS OF POWER FOR BOARD MEMBERS TO DISMANTLE SYSTEMIC RACISM: 1. School boards recruit, hire, support and evaluate the Superintendent.

2. School boards provide fiscal management, including strategically allocating resources and approving the district budget.

3. School boards utilize a governance framework to develop goals and guardrails for the district that reflect their values and priorities.

4. School boards write and pass policy and hold the system accountable for execution.

5. School boards represent the community and are responsible for effective and authentic 2-way communication and partnership.

6. School boards authorize charter schools and approve school performance frameworks to ensure their quality and access.

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M E M B E R S O F C O LO R O F T E N H AV E I N S U F F I C I E N T A N D I N E Q U I TA B L E A C C E S S T O T R A I N I N G A N D R E S O U R C E S T O SUPPORT THEIR WORK. School boards perform many critical functions, providing oversight and direction for school districts, so their members should be well versed in a range of key governance functions. But are they?

To assess how prepared they are to fulfill their core responsibilities, we asked board members about their experience, training, and support across six central governance responsibilities embedded in their roles.

Figure 8 captures the share of respondents who

reported no experience, training, or support for each of the six functions we surveyed. Across every function, except for addressing issues of racism and equity, board members of color reported having no experience or training at a higher rate than their white colleagues. About 25% of the respondents of color indicated no experience or training in three key functions of the school board: managing large budgets, engaging with the media and community, and developing and enacting policy.

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“

W E ’ R E I N A R U R A L PA R T O F T H E S TAT E , S O W E L A C K RESOURCES. A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT BUDGET WAS N’T A T H I N G F O R U S B EC AU S E N O B O DY T H O U G H T I T WA S I M P O R TA N T. I T H A S B E E N C O N T E N T I O U S BECAUSE OTHER BOARD MEMBERS DON’T REALIZE WE CAN ASK FOR MONEY IN THE BUDGET TO GET P R O F E S S I O N A L D E V E L O P M E N T. W E J U S T A S S U M E T H AT THE SUPERINTENDENT AND THE FINANCE TEAM ARE S U P P O S E D TO B R I N G E V E RY T H I N G I N . I T H I N K I T I S A R E A L LY U N F O R T U N AT E C Y C L E O F N O T K N O W I N G W H AT Y O U D O N ’ T K N O W .”

— School board member from an SBP focus group

High-quality training is essential, given that a considerable share of current board members report insufficient experience and readiness to perform critical functions. Yet, as shown in Figure 9, the vast majority of respondents across all six areas reported that the training they did receive was inadequate. For example, only 27% of members of color and 25% of white members reported that their training in managing large budgets was productive.

In general, the level of satisfaction with their training is fairly consistent between board members of color and white members. There are large gaps,

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however, in the perceived adequacy of training in hiring, managing, and evaluating a superintendent/ CEO, as well as in training to address issues of racism and equity. In both cases, board members of color were more satisfied with their training. But given that most board members are white, it is alarming that 63% of white members indicate dissatisfaction with their training on addressing racism and equity in education. These data make clear that there is an urgent need to provide high-quality, readily available training to help board members address these systemic issues that so often are preserved and promulgated by school boards.

FRAMEWORK FOR EFFECTIVE ANTIRACIST SCHOOL BOARDS Meeting the needs of today’s public school systems requires school boards filled with courageous, well-trained, and supported members who can work with their colleagues to use the tools of governance to pass and monitor the right policies. These essential elements of reform can be grouped into three categories: People, power, and professionalization. These strategies are mutually reinforcing. When they work in concert, their impact on the effectiveness of the board and their benefits to students is amplified.

From the knowledge we’ve gained through our research and from working closely with school boards across the country, we have identified eight essential elements that, if met, will lead to transformational decisionmaking and effective leadership in school governance.

Below, we discuss in greater detail each strategy: People, power, and professionalization. We identify key steps board members can take, as well as actions that advocates, funders, and community members can use to push their local boards.

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PEOPLE It is vitally important that members of elected school boards have shared experiences with the students and families they serve. Boards today are not representative of the children in their districts across many aspects of their identities. The lack of representation on school boards, combined with their lack of personal connections with the neighborhoods, results in a critical absence of the relevant experience necessary to connect board leadership and decisions with the students’ experiences.

We need school board members who, regardless of lived experience, understand the need for active, antiracist leadership.

School board members with this mindset will prioritize antiracist policies and governance. They have the awareness, conviction, and courage to break the mold while keeping their focus on students, despite working with institutions that tend to elevate the needs of adults.

As research, our survey, and our experience make clear, representation matters. School board members of color are more likely to believe that systemic racism exists and that addressing it falls directly under the purview of the board. Moreover, they are more likely to prioritize raising achievement, closing gaps, and advancing equity.

Electing people who share identities and experiences with the students and families served by the board, and who share an antiracist mindset, will require investment in the infrastructure to identify, recruit, train, and retain them once elected.

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CALL TO ACTION Current and potential school board members, funders, policymakers, advocates, and community members can support the election and reelection of diverse school board candidates with an antiracist mindset in three key ways. How you engage in this work will depend on who you are and your roles in the community.

Push for diverse antiracist candidates.

Make clear that the community values diverse, antiracist elected leaders. Raise awareness about the urgent need for antiracist candidates. During elections, host forums or debates specifically to understand candidates’ commitment to dismantling systemic racism while in office. Find out what keeps underrepresented candidates from running in your District and advocate for change to those systems and structures, including when and where meetings are held, whether childcare and meals are provided at meetings, and whether the staffing and resources exist to ensure all school board members have the capacity, training and mentorship needed to be effective in the role.

Build and support organizations to develop an education leadership pipeline.

Invest in national and local ecosystems with organizations that help to recruit, train, elect, and reelect strong candidates. National, state, and local philanthropies, as well as individual donors, can support these organizations.

Provide resources to candidates of color.

Generally speaking, serving as a school board member is poorly compensated. This is a meaningful barrier for candidates of color who wish to run for election or reelection.

Advocates and community members can push for a policy change that increases needbased school board member compensation. You can donate directly to the campaigns of candidates of color. You can also provide in-kind supports such as childcare or meals.

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POWER Once the right people are in place, they must be prepared and willing to use their power and influence to ensure the school board focuses on advancing equity and justice in education.

First, effective antiracist school boards must have a strong framework for governing, such as Carver24 or Student Focused Governance.25 An effective framework helps a school board govern appropriately and find the right balance between supporting superintendents and holding them accountable on behalf of the community.

Second, school boards must be focused on passing highimpact, antiracist policies that offer solutions to historic harms and dismantle oppressive systems and practices.

A key aspect of that work is encouraging investment in communities of color.

Finally, school boards must embrace and demand transparency in data and policy to clearly identify disparities across groups and track those inequities back to the policies and practices that drive them.

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CALL TO ACTION Current and potential school board members, funders, policymakers, advocates, and community members can support fixing the power structure of the community’s education system. How you engage in this work will depend on who you are and your roles in your communities.

Systematically review policies and governance frameworks.

Many school district policies perpetuate structural racism in education. Boards should conduct a thorough policy audit through an equity lens to remove or rewrite policies or pass entirely new ones designed to improve student outcomes and experiences. School boards should also adopt effective governance frameworks designed to help the board conduct their work effectively.

Hire an antiracist superintendent.

This is straightforward. School boards and superintendents need to work hand in hand to dismantle systemic racism. If a board is working to enact antiracist policies but the district superintendent is not on board, progress will be elusive. Superintendent evaluations must be explicity connected to goals of antiracism and equity.

Ensure data transparency.

To successfully disrupt structural inequity, school boards will need broad support from their communities. Indeed, it is critical that a community be able to hold its school board accountable for advancing justice and improving education for their children. To build trust and demonstrate their progress, school boards must produce and publish high-quality, publicly available, and readily understandable data and information about students’ performance, experiences, and opportunities, disaggregated by subgroups and at the level closest to students whenever possible. School Board policies must also be easily accessible and there must be a thorough and transparent process for community feedback on school board policies.

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P R O F E S S I O N A L I Z AT I O N Electing the “right people” with the “right mindsets,” and pushing for them to do the vital work of dismantling systemic racism in education, are the first two steps that will make transformational leadership possible. The final component is the professionalization of school boards.

There is training, support, staffing, and funding for every other group of critical decision-makers in the school system (i.e., superintendents, principals, and teachers). Yet school board members are expected to govern effectively, communicate with their communities, respond to political demands, and manage multimillion- or multibillion-dollar budgets with minimal training, no support, limited staff, and inadequate or nonexistent compensation. Add to that the need for school boards to evolve to become critical agents dismantling systemic racism, and the job is daunting — particularly without consistent, highquality support and training.

School board members need — indeed, the task of addressing historic and ongoing injustice in education demands — highquality training and financial resources to properly execute their work. Board members will require ongoing, real-time, differentiated support to nurture their growth, as well as staff to support policy research and writing tasks. The long-term goal of professionalizing school board members is to help the entire board align on leveraging the tools at their disposal for good governance and increasing their collective impact.

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CALL TO ACTION Current and potential school board members, funders, policymakers, advocates, and community members can support the professionalization of school boards. Once again, how you engage in this work will depend on who you are and your roles in your communities.

Raise compensation.

School board members are often uncompensated or undercompensated for the 10-30 hours a week they spend on their board responsibilities and activities. This is unsustainable, especially for board presidents, who carry a far greater workload. Increasing need-based compensation is necessary to recruit and retain diverse, high-quality candidates and board members. This is particularly important for attracting younger and less-wealthy candidates.

Fund training and staff positions.

To do the difficult work of governing a school district and dismantling systemic racism in education, school boards need higher-quality and more regular, equity-centered training.

States, districts, and third-party organizations should institute training requirements and increase the level and availability of training and support they provide. Additionally, school boards should consider allocating a portion of the budget to hire staff who report directly to the board. This will help to improve the capacity and efficacy of the board overall.

Demand accountability.

Hold your school board members accountable for providing professional, high-quality community-oriented and transparent leadership. Vote them out if they do not provide it.

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CONCLUSION

Elected school boards have an outsized effect on education policy and make consequential decisions that directly impact students and families. Yet, district governance receives little attention as a driver of inequity in education or as a powerful lever for change. But that change is predicated on reinvigorating and reshaping school boards — transforming them from bulwarks against change into proactive, bold agents of progress.

We believe this is a pivotal moment for education and for school boards. In some parts of the country, relatively small factions that are nevertheless vocal and politically powerful are attempting to seize power on school boards to roll back progress, block schools from holding open and honest discussions of race and racism in America, and enact laws that discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students. We must defeat these revanchist efforts.

AND JUST AS POWER CAN BE WIELDED TO DERAIL PROGRESS, SO TOO CAN IT B E D E P LOY E D I N P U R S U I T O F E Q U I T Y AND JUSTICE.

For school boards to fulfill their potential and help to drive the work of deconstructing systemic racism, they must become more diverse and more representative of the communities they serve. We dare to dream of a world in which diverse antiracist candidates who share identities, experiences, and ties with their communities consistently run for their local school boards. And when they make the decision to run, their campaigns are well funded, strategic, and supported at every level.

Most importantly, we imagine that once they fill those seats, they receive the training, support, and connections necessary to govern with courage, competence, and impact.

for reelection and continue the transformational work they’ve begun on behalf of the students who depend on them.

Ultimately, we believe that the structure of school boards isn’t the problem; who their members are and how they are trained and supported is.

It is clear that communities want a democratically elected school board: 93% of districts have elected boards26 and several high-profile boards are moving back to elected boards after experimenting with mayoral appointments. And for the education community, school boards are the ultimate form of authentic community engagement that so many people are striving for; school board members are quite literally elected by the community to represent them. We work around school boards at our peril.

Working with them and supporting them is how we will enact community-supported, sticky, systemic change that dismantles racism and oppression in public schools.

The education sector has been attempting to address educational inequity ever since the Coleman Report27 first highlighted the achievement gap over 50 years ago — with little success. But we have yet to put the people most affected by educational inequities in charge of the decisions, resources, and policies that impact their kids and communities. Let’s invest in 50,000 school board members of color28 over the next five election cycles — not only to get them elected, but to support them to govern effectively and sustainably.

This represents 53% of the approximately 100,000 school board members in America, which is how many POC we would need to reflect our public school student population.

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Finally, we believe that if school board members are supported and feel effective, they will choose to run

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JOIN OUR MOVEMENT

School Board Partners was founded by two elected school board members to provide the community support and training we lacked. Ethan was elected in November 2016 and Carrie in May 2017. We both had long and successful careers in education, policy, and civil rights. Nevertheless, we found ourselves ill prepared to perform all of the many functions and meet all of the critical responsibilities of an elected school board member. Being just one of seven decision-makers is different from being the CEO. Being elected is different from being hired. Politics are tough and policy-writing is a new skill for many. The training we had access to was mediocre and was not focused on dismantling centuries of systemic racism in government institutions.

So we decided to create something different: an intensive two-year fellowship for elected school board members focused on antiracism and equity across America.

We brought together our first cohort of fellows in 2019 and we are now recruiting for our fifth cohort. We have worked with nearly 100 school board members from 65 districts over the past four years, impacting nearly 6 million students. Our fellows are diverse in every sense of the word: in race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, geography, language, disability, and more. Eighty-five percent of our fellows are people of color.

The fellowship consists of monthly virtual webinars, quarterly convenings, mentorship and executive coaching, and one-on-one support in policy-writing, finance and budgeting, governance, superintendent hiring and evaluation, community engagement, and more.

L E A R N M O R E AT S C H O O L B OA R D PA RT N E R S .O R G

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END NOTES

The Boston School Board, or Boston School Committee, is one of the few appointed school boards in America. The transition from elected to appointed school board in Boston has a racist history: https://www.electthebsc.org/history and https://www. wbur.org/news/2021/08/17/appointed-vs-electedschool-committee 1

This is based on our survey question : “Are you planning to run for reelection?” n=598 2

Ballotpedia, “School Board Election Trends, 2016,” retrieved from https://ballotpedia.org/ School_board_incumbency_analysis:_2016_in_ brief#:~:text=71.31%20%%20of%20incumbents%20 whose,challengers%20to%20retain%20their%20seats 3

Definition of Institutional Racism, retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/ english/institutional-racism 4

Bill Leonard, “Study Suggests Bias Against ‘Black’ Names on Resumes,” 2003, retrieved from https:// www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/ pages/0203hrnews2.aspx 5

Catherine Lhamon et al., “Public Education Funding: In an Era of Increasing Concentration of Poverty and Resegregation, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,” 2018, retrieved from https://www.usccr.gov/files/ pubs/2018/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf; Roby Chatterji, “Fighting Systemic Racism in K-12 Education: Helping Allies Move from the Keyboard to the School Board,” The Center for American Progress, July 8, 2020, retrieved from https://www.americanprogress. org/article/fighting-systemic-racism-k-12-educationhelping-allies-move-keyboard-school-board/ 6

Bruce Baker, Danielle Farrie, and David Sciarra, “Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card, Education Law Center, Feb. 2018, retrieved from https://edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/publications/ Is_School_Funding_Fair_7th_Editi.pdf; https://edbuild. org/content/23-billion/full-report.pdf 7

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Dan Goldhaber et al., “How Did It Get This Way? Disentangling the Sources of Teacher Quality Gaps Through Agent-Based Modeling,” CALDER, Jan. 2022, retrieved from https://caldercenter.org/sites/ default/files/CALDER%20WP%20259-0122.pdf; Jessica Cardichon et al., “Inequitable Opportunity to Learn: Student Access to Certified and Experienced Teachers,” The Learning Policy Institute, Feb. 12, 2020, retrieved from https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/ product/crdc-teacher-access-report 8

Emily Deruy, “Where Calculus Class Isn’t an Option,” The Atlantic, June 7, 2016, retrieved from https://www. theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/06/wherecalculus-class-isnt-an-option/485987/; Christina Theokas and Reid Saaris, “Finding America’s Missing AP and IB Students,” The Education Trust, June 2013, retrieved from https://edtrust.org/wp-content/ uploads/2013/10/Missing_Students.pdf; Jason Fontana, Dae Kim, and David Lapp, “Unequal Access to Educational Opportunity in High School: A National Analysis of the Civil Rights Data Collection,” Research for Action, Jan. 2020, retrieved from https://files.eric. ed.gov/fulltext/ED603769.pdf 9

The Nation’s Report Card, U.S. Department of Education, retrieved from https://www. nationsreportcard.gov/ 10

National Center for Education Statistics, “Public High School Graduation Rates,” U.S. Department of Education, May 2021, retrieved from https://nces. ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-schoolgraduation-rates 11

College Enrollment Rates, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, 2020, retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/ coe/pdf/coe_cpb.pdf; Postsecondary Graduation Rates, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Feb. 2019, retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/ indicator_red.asp 12

Definition of Anti-Racism, retrieved from https:// www.bu.edu/csc/edref/antiracism/

This is based on our collective survey questions asking current board members about how they identify and other demographics and are displayed in Figure 2.

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The survey was circulated to over 20,000 school board members nationally serving in districts with student populations comprising at least 20% students of color. This results in a 3.375% response rate over the two weeks the survey was open.

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Alisha Kirby, “New Report Highlights How a More Diverse School Board can Improve Outcomes for a Diverse Student Body, “California School Boards Association, Dec. 2020, retrieved from http://blog. csba.org/diverse-school-board-benefits/; Brett Fischer, “No Spending Without Representation: School Boards and the Racial Gap in Education Finance,” Nov. 2021, retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=3558239 17

Christina Samuels, “Why School Board Diversity Matters,” Education Week, Nov. 2020, retrieved from: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/why-schoolboard-diversity-matters/2020/11 18

Fischer, 2021; Vladimir Kogan, Stephane Lavertu, and Zachary Peskowitz, “How Does Minority Political Representation Affect School District Administration and Student Outcomes?” (EdWorkingPaper), retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https:// www.edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai20244.pdf 19

Ballotpedia, “School Board Elections, 2022” retrieved from https://ballotpedia.org/School_ board_elections,_2022; Andrew Waite, “School Board Elections Feature Varying Degrees of Competitiveness,” The Daily Gazette, May 16, 2022, retrieved from https://dailygazette.com/2022/05/16/ tuesdays-school-board-elections-feature-varyingdegrees-of-competitiveness/ John Carver and Miriam Carver, “Policy Governance,” retrieved from https://www.carvergovernance.com/ index.html 24

Student Outcomes Focused Governance: A Continuous Improvement Framework, retrieved from: https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/ Domain/219/Student%20Outcomes%20Focused%20 Governance.pdf 25

Ballotpedia, “School Board,” retrieved from https:// ballotpedia.org/School_board 26

Coleman, James “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/ fulltext/ED012275.pdf 27

Cresean Hughes et al., “Racial Threat, Intergroup Contact, and School Punishment, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2017, retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ full/10.1177/0022427816689811 20

Average age of parents at child’s birth, retrieved from https://www.ssb.no/260132/average-age-ofparents-at-childs-birth-sy-72 21

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