Don’t Skip the School Board Races on Your Ballot. Here’s Why They Could Be Pivotal

A KQED piece urges Bay Area voters to pay attention to school board contests on the November ballot. It says many winners take office by narrow margins, while nationally more than half of candidates run unopposed in a typical cycle and turnout often falls between 5% and 10%. KQED says it asked 390 candidates competing for 109 seats across nine counties about topics such as possible school closures and cellphone use.

Experts quoted in the article describe what boards do: approve district budgets (San Francisco's tops $1.36 billion), hire and evaluate superintendents, set priorities, and approve curriculum and labor contracts. Jon Valant of the Brookings Institution says boards have become stages for national cultural disputes, a shift he ties to the pandemic era and to organized groups backing candidates. He says such groups' influence appears to be fading in California, though a Brookings survey found board members still feel their work has grown more political. Valant also argues attention should go to core issues like AI, achievement declines, absenteeism and enrollment.

The article says many boards chosen this fall will have to decide how to respond to shrinking enrollment, including whether to close schools. In San Francisco, the previous superintendent resigned under pressure in 2024 after a troubled closure effort. This year the board revived consolidation and gave Superintendent Maria Su until 2030 to decide. The board, including three members to be elected this fall, will have final approval.