Hoosiers have done more homework on their local school board candidates than any other races in the 2022 election.
Candidate forums have drawn packed-house audiences, and most or all of the candidates have shown up. School board candidate interviews in the newspapers and broadcast media have been highly read and viewed, and most or all of the candidates responded to those interview requests. That’s the beauty of the nonpartisan election format for school board races in Indiana and 46 other states. People seeking school board seats don’t have an “R” or “D” or “L” beside their names on the ballots and it should stay that way.
The Indiana General Assembly’s ruling political party tried to change the state’s nonpartisan school board system in last winter’s legislative session, but public opposition crumbled that attempt. Republican lawmakers pushing those bills had rationalized the election-driven tactic as some sort of noble gesture, insisting the party labels would give voters more information.
That claim has been proven wrong this fall.
Because school board candidates run as nonpartisan, without a party label, voters ask more questions of them on issues, and those issues are almost always hyper-local, from hiring teachers and principals to textbook fees, contract negotiations, staffing levels, construction projects, facility usage, and free- and reduced-lunch policies.
Voters have dug into their studies of the school board candidates this autumn, and those candidates — including a whopping 14 seeking four Vigo County School Board seats — have generally responded.
That’s less true for partisan races, where some candidates — usually multi-term incumbents — skip community forums and disregard pre-election interviews and questionnaires. Voters in those races have to rely on Rs and Ds and Ls that reveal little about those candidates’ intentions for infrastructure projects, state education funding, workforce development policies and more.
Indiana lawmakers who said they wanted voters to become more informed about school board candidates have gotten their wish. And, they didn’t have to force school board candidates to wear political party labels to do so. “Voters have a wealth of information on K-12 schools and the candidates for school board offices, and I think that’s to the benefit of our public, to be a well-informed electorate,” said Terry Spradlin, executive director of the Indiana School Boards Association. “It proves we don’t need partisan elections for school boards,” Spradlin added Thursday afternoon.
He doesn’t see “any new momentum” for the Legislature to try again to adopt partisan school board elections.
Interest in those races is already at a peak now.
“There’s a high level of attention and scrutiny of school board races around the state of Indiana,” Spradlin said.
Of course, the national political forces intent on polarizing the country right down to the local school level aren’t giving up, even after they failed to persuade Indiana to politicize school board races. National political action committees (PACs) and parties have injected themselves into school board races in some Indiana metropolitan areas, inflating divisive issues that appeal to people’s emotions at voting time but in reality have scant relevance to their local schools.
“Across the state, there are members of political parties and campaign committees donating to school board candidates,” Andrew Downs, director emeritus of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics in Fort Wayne, said Thursday. “Whether voters want it or not, school board races are being framed in traditional partisan ways. I will not be surprised if there is a bill [in the Indiana Legislature next year] trying to convert school board races to partisan.”
Indiana doesn’t need politicized school board elections. School board members testified at legislative hearings last winter, regarding bills to force candidates to declare a political party, and said they’ve served alongside fellow school board members without ever knowing those colleagues’ political persuasions, according to the Indiana Citizen, a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocating for civic engagement.
School board members who aren’t overtly political would have to get overtly political, and most likely would lose their seats to party-backed candidates.
They’d be distracted from their primary mission, serving the day-to-day needs of local kids and making sure the necessary teachers, staff and resources are properly provided.
In recent years, school board members have had plenty of issues demanding their attention, and attracting the interest of Hoosiers.
Many of those issues got thrust onto local school boards by politicians’ education policies dating back to former Gov. Mitch Daniels’ reforms and snowballing along with local issues in the past decade surrounding Vigo County’s school system.
The high interest of Vigo Countians in school board races and related issues is part of that progression’s “snowball effect,” said Matt Bergbower, political science professor at Indiana State University.
“That is just a lot of education issues being presented to the residents of Vigo County in a short amount of time,” Bergbower said Thursday. “Having recognized that, it would make sense that races for the School Board are getting more attention than usual. We have been building up to this moment for years.”
And those issues are best handled by a local school board comprised of members with as little direct connection to political party influences as possible.
Indiana’s nonpartisan school board elections process should stay in place.