For the longest time, I paid very little attention to school boards. What they do. Who runs for them. What the people running for them say they want to do if elected. This all despite working in education for the first eight years of my professional life.

But school boards really do matter. And it’s an elected position that for much of contemporary American life avoided politicization. So it’s been fascinating (and also disheartening) to watch school boards locally and nationally take on a political tint.

Yet this politicization is far from a given. Just take the Indianapolis area, where it’s interesting to compare the differing trajectories of school board races in Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) and Carmel.  

Background on Board Races in Carmel and IPS

First, some quick background on races in both districts. I won’t go deep here, so if you’re brand new to what’s going on, I recommend this IndyStar Q&A with Carmel’s board members and this Chalkbeat Indiana voter guide for IPS board members.

All caught up? Great. In Carmel, four candidates are running for two at-large seats: Dina Ferchmin, Robin Clark, Jon Shapiro, and Kris Wheeler. Ferchmin and Clark are running explicitly conservative campaigns while Shapiro and Wheeler are running more typical school board campaigns (which in Carmel means mostly promising to be a steady steward of a district that is considered by many to be one of the best in Indiana, let alone the country).

Meanwhile, in IPS, eight candidates are vying for four open seats (one race has three candidates, another is a single candidate running unopposed, and the other two are head-to-head matches). Candidates include Deandra Thompson, Kenneth Allen (the only incumbent), Carrie Harris, Allan Schoff, Hasaan Rashid, Allissa Impink, Gayle Cosby, and Ashley Thomas. While there are places these candidates sharply differ as to the future of IPS and how the district can improve outcomes for its students, all of their campaigns lack the distinctly political flavor currently found in Carmel.

The Issues Defining the Race in Carmel

The two self-described conservatives running (Ferchmin and Clark) think leftist ideology has invaded Carmel classrooms. They oppose DEI initiatives that Carmel Clay Schools have put in motion and believe academic rigor is suffering as a result. They’ve also readily spread rumors that Carmel teachers are imposing leftist ideology on students. Why do I say “rumors”? Well, they don’t offer any evidence, stories, or examples that this is happening (it’s also the word the current Carmel Clay Schools’ superintendent used).

A recent WFYI story that followed Ferchmin’s campaign is revealing. At one point, she is quoted saying, “All of these politics, I’m trying to remove that out of our schools… and let schools be neutral.” This simply doesn’t square with her explicitly conservative political campaign for an at-large board seat. Even if a certain brand of politics did exist in Carmel classrooms, Ferchmin doesn’t want neutral schools. She wants schools that reflect her conservative ideology.

The best example she offers for the existence of “politics” in the classroom is that some teachers hang up Pride flags. To which she says, “Then we need to allow all sets of flags.” I have no idea what other flags she has in mind (the American one already features in pretty much every American classroom). Moreover, it seems a willful misunderstanding of why a teacher might find it valuable to hang up a Pride flag. And also, let’s be clear. Hanging a Pride flag in the classroom is not a political stunt or statement of which party you support. It is an empathetic act meant to offer visibility and dignity to LGBTQ students. And a second also is that even the Pride flag example is a hypothetical in Carmel schools. I’m sure a handful of classrooms do fly them. But it’s not as if Ferchmin offers evidence that every classroom does or that the classrooms that do have underperforming students or higher rates of student/parent complaints.

As noted above, Carmel Clay Schools’ superintendent (and, perhaps more importantly, Carmel students) are clear: there’s no issue here (to hear directly from them, I really do recommend that WFYI article linked above). At one point in the WFYI story, the specter of White students being shamed because of DEI initiatives is raised. The full diversity of a student body can be honored and celebrated without “oppressing” or “shaming” white students. It seems like Carmel’s DEI initiatives attempt to do this, even if there may be reasonable critiques to offer. You likely already know this. But I’m not sure Ferchmin does.

Okay. Small detour. I recently read a brilliantly excoriating review of Robert Putman’s recent book The Upswing. In the book, Putman waxes poetic about the nadir of American social society in the 1940s and 1950s, and blames the 1960s for why we’ve descended into such an “unequal, polarized, angry, and dysfunctional” society. To which the reviewer notes: “It is the lack of justice, not the lack of morals” that explains this decline.

I think something similar anytime a conservative candidate rages against the leftist ideology they perceive has invaded classrooms. To put a spin on that reviewer’s conclusion: Our classrooms do not suffer from too much liberal politics; they suffer from a lack of justice. For instance, even in Carmel, the opportunity gaps between White students and students of color are wide and show no sign of closing soon. But it is unlikely Ferchmin has anything like those in mind when she expresses the concern that academics are declining.

Now, Ferchmin and Clark are only two of the four candidates running. The other two, Shapiro and Wheeler, might have deeply conservative values themselves. I have no idea because they aren’t running political races, nor have they created boogeymen that don’t exist to beat a specific ideological drum. They largely express the intention to continue stewarding Carmel Clay Schools in the direction they’re already heading.

Meanwhile In IPS?

Carmel and IPS as school districts have little in common. And the communities that send their students to these districts differ as well. For instance, voting histories show Carmel tends to be quite conservative while the area within IPS’ boundaries tends to be quite liberal. For our purposes here, while the baseline political leanings differ, for me each district shares an equal chance of having board races that become political flash points.

But what you don’t see in an urban district like IPS (either here or really anywhere else around the country to my knowledge) is a set of ultra-liberal activists rising up with intent to take over school boards so they can implement the leftist ideology in classrooms that conservatives seem to think is already there and in need of rooting out.

That hasn’t happened in IPS historically (but it has in the other direction in Carmel). And it’s not happening among the current set of candidates. The candidate forum from early October is worth a watch get a sense of the different visions for the district that these people have. In watching, you might be able to assume candidates’ underlying political ideologies. Certainly, I’m not naïve. Any actor in the public square brings their political leanings with them. But there’s a stark difference between allowing those leanings to inform your work and seeking to impose those leanings on thousands of students.

So what is at play in the IPS board race? The two issues I’ve been most interested in following relate to IPS’ Rebuilding Stronger plan and the possibility for IPS to deepen partnerships with local charter schools through its Innovation School Network.

Rebuilding Stronger

On the first, I’ve been surprised to see that none of the candidates fundamentally disagree with Rebuilding Stronger. Perhaps they feel the bus has left the station so what’s the point? A couple candidates believe the implementation could be strengthened, but that’s quite different from thinking the plan is ill-fated altogether. And some candidates want to let Rebuilding Stronger play out over a series of years before levying any kind of judgment on its success or failure.

Charter School Collaboration

On this second point, I also assumed there would be more distance between the candidates than there is. Overall, five of them essentially fit into the “we should consider any kind of partnership that strengthens outcomes for kids, which could include charters” while two do not support IPS increasing its charter partnerships at all. I don’t necessarily see any candidate coming out in full-throated support of increased charter partnerships. While there are camps, the battle lines aren’t as stark as what we’ve seen in past board races.

Ultimately, the race doesn’t feel as if it would shift the entire trajectory of the board based on who gets elected. It could shift, certainly, but I don’t think there’s a combination of people filling these four seats that would fundamentally send the IPS board down a different path than the one it is currently on where at least the potential of charter school collaboration is on the table.

Need the Future of Local School Boards Be Political?

What’s my overall point in comparing the outlines of the board races in Carmel and IPS? I suppose it’s a roundabout way of noting how I think running explicitly political campaigns for a nonpartisan office naturally warps the issues candidates campaign on. Again, I’m not naïve. Nobody running for an IPS board position is “ideology free” compared to someone in Carmel.

But as it stands, the issues IPS candidates are wrestling with (1: is our current strategic plan working and how could it work better and 2: are there partnerships IPS could forge to improve outcomes for kids?) seem much more related to what might create the best conditions for kids to learn and succeed and less concerned with seeing a particular worldview imposed on students. That’s despite swimming in the same cultural milieu of central Indiana.

My other point is: are candidates running on behalf of kids or behalf of themselves? I think it’s easy these days to trick yourself into thinking you’re doing something on behalf of kids when all you’re really doing is trying to make the world look a way that makes you most comfortable.

At the end of this election cycle, Carmel is still going to have more money and better test results than IPS. But maybe this is one lesson the northern suburb could learn from Indy’s urban core: it’s not the classroom that’s suffering from too much politics; it’s the boardroom.