School district news

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This is an archive of Ballotpedia news articles about school districts and school board elections in America's largest school districts by enrollment.

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More than 12 percentage point spike in contested November school board elections compared to 2016

By Mandy Gillip

Compared to past years, November 2017's elections saw a significant spike in contested school board races held by America's largest school districts by enrollment.

On Tuesday, 968 (86.04 percent) of the 1,125 candidates faced opposition. This continued a trend of increasing rates of contested school board elections since Ballotpedia's first full year of school board election coverage in 2014:

  • 2014: 65.90 percent of school board candidates faced opposition in November and 32.57 percent ran unopposed over the year
  • 2015: 71.68 percent of school board candidates faced opposition in November and 28.89 percent ran unopposed over the year
  • 2016: 73.68 percent of school board candidates faced opposition in November and 26.32 percent ran unopposed over the year
  • 2017: 86.04 percent of school board candidates faced opposition in November

In summary, the November 2017 election saw 12.36 percentage point increase in the rate of contested elections from November 2016 and an increase of 20.14 percentage points from November 2014.

Across 185 of America's largest school districts by enrollment, 629 school board seats were up for grabs in 18 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

A possible factor affecting the spike in contested school board races in 2017 was a policy adopted in California, which led to the cancellation of over 80 percent of the elections scheduled in the state's largest school districts on November 7, 2017. These elections were moved to November 2018 and allowed the districts to comply with a 2015 voter participation law that required local election dates to coincide with statewide election dates by November 2022. This shift to even-year elections may have contributed to the increase in contested elections, as an average of about 25 percent of school board races were uncontested in California between 2014 and 2017.

Editor's note: Washington had 77 seats up for election in 34 districts, but that state's data is not included in the challenger and incumbent success rates table of this report. Because Washington is a vote-by-mail state, postal delays in ballot returns mean that election results may not be available for several weeks. Ballotpedia will report results for Washington state school districts once all ballots are counted and the general election winners have been determined.


Control, funding, and policy at stake: outcomes of November 2017's top school board elections

By Mandy Gillip

School board elections occupy a unique place in the American political landscape, given their direct connection to the specific duty of educating students. The issues that matter in these elections are diverse and often hyper-local. However, the outcomes of some local school board elections each year can loom large at the state or even national level.

On Tuesday, 188 of America's 1,000 largest school districts by enrollment held elections. Four of these elections were identified by Ballotpedia as particularly noteworthy:

  • Nearly a decade of battles over education policy experiments may have concluded with the outcome in Colorado's Douglas County School District.
  • The largest school district in Texas, Houston ISD, is at risk of losing local control to the state government due to school performance issues.
  • Meanwhile across the country, the second-largest district in New Jersey, Jersey City Public Schools, regained local control in 2017 after 28 years of state oversight.
  • The entire board overseeing Atlanta Public Schools was on the ballot at a time when more than half of the district's funding is at risk due to county government decisions.

These districts illustrate the high stakes and complex nature of school board elections. Stay tuned for our second report at the end of this week, which will highlight statistics on school board elections held across the country.


St. Joseph community debates school district culture change on eve of Proposition 1 vote

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The website for the pro-levy group, the Committee To Move St. Joseph Forward, has a section responding to culture criticisms. It says, "Since the controversy that rocked our community, the St. Joseph School District has overhauled its administration and addressed the audit issues. In the time since, a tax levy wasn’t renewed, forcing the district to make budget cuts and dive deep into its reserves. While these new faces and many reforms will bring positive benefits to the district into the future, the negative impact on the budget must be addressed. The St. Joseph School District now ranks 85th out 88 Northwest Missouri school districts in funding, operating at a $7 million deficit annually. This is not sustainable."[1]

Pat Dillon, a pro-levy committee co-chair and the vice president of advocacy and government relations for Mosaic Life Care, acknowledged that St. Joseph residents had a good reason to be angry, but said that students shouldn’t be penalized for the past mistakes.

"All we do now is punish the teachers and punish the teachers and the kids and the community,” he said. “If you have a problem going forward, do it by going to the ballot box with your board members. Get the right board members you want to move forward. Don't punish the kids and teachers anymore."[2]

Levy supporter and former CFO Beau Musser

On November 5, former chief financial officer and district whistleblower Beau Musser announced his support for Proposition 1.[3] In a video posted by the pro-levy committee, Musser said, “I’m confident things are now being done the right way. Without properly funded schools, our ability to attract new businesses and quality teachers will only become harder. Worse yet, our children won’t get the quality education they deserve.”[4]

In 2014, Musser was falsely accused by the district of sexual misconduct and creating a hostile workplace. These allegations followed his discovery of improper business practices within the district as well as his assistance uncovering the unauthorized administrator stipends overseen by Dan Colgan and Superintendent Fred Czerwonka. He was put on paid administrative leave for seven months, and eventually sued the district for slander. The district and Musser reached a settlement in April 2015.


Major St. Joseph businesses provide support for school tax levy increase, opponents criticize tax abatements


St. Joseph tax levy opponent files ethics complaint against school district

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Committee to Move St. Joseph Forward, "Home," accessed November 6, 2017
  2. ↑ St. Joe Channel, "SJSD Tax Levy Campaign Urging Voters to "Move Forward"," October 11, 2017
  3. ↑ St. Joseph News-Press, "Former school district executive endorses Prop 1," November 5, 2017
  4. ↑ Facebook, "Move St Joseph Forward," November 5, 2017
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