It’s no secret that school board races across the country have become increasingly political in recent years. Indiana has not been immune. Carmel and Noblesville in particular have seen increasingly contentious school board races that elevate partisan concerns (primarily right-leaning ones). Now, Indiana seems to be headed full steam ahead into the land of explicitly partisan school board races with Senate Bill 287 passing the House and Senate (though it currently sits in conference committee to reconcile language differences between the House and Senate versions).

What Does Senate Bill 287 Do?

The main thing that Senate Bill 287 does is require anyone running for a school board position to state one of three things as part of their candidacy: 1) their political party affiliation, 2) if they are an independent candidate, or 3) they choose not to disclose their political party or are unaffiliated with any party but also do not identify as an independent.

The bill also creates a mechanism for political parties to challenge the affiliation of a candidate, makes some other minor election tweaks, and increases school board candidate stipends while they are in office. But it’s really the party affiliation piece that’s the most meaningful change.

What’s the Purpose of the Bill?

Some version of this proposal has been considered multiple times over the past few sessions. It stalled every time. Even this year, the majority of public testimony was in opposition to the bill. But the Republican majority in both the House and Senate forged ahead anyway. So what are their reasons for passing it? Republicans offered three main arguments that I’ll analyze below.

Argument #1: Making them partisan will increase voter turnout.

The argument here goes something like this. Most voters have very little information on candidates in general. They have even less information on school board candidates. So they either fail to vote for this office or either cast their votes blindly.

Thus, making candidates identify with a political party gives voters an informational shortcut that indicates whether or not a candidate largely shares their values. Nine different states either require or allow candidates to declare a party affiliation. And I’ll concede that the little research that’s out there does seem to point to increased votes cast in school board races that are partisan (which is different from increased voter turnout; voters were already turning out, but they left school board races blank, presumably for lack of information about what different candidates stood for).

But I would argue our goal with any election reform ought to be better electoral outcomes, not necessarily just increased vote tallies. Moreover, this argument seems to hinge on the fact that the majority of voters are low information (true). And the fix is to give them a single word of more information than they previously had (these are not the droids I’m looking for, as they say).

So the only change is that now people see Democrat or Republican next to a person’s name (who they still presumably know nothing else about). Of course I know those terms carry a lot of baggage for voters (both the kind you want to pack on an airplane and the kind that sinks ships on the open ocean). Yet it’s ludicrous to me that, in the context of a local school board, simply having a political marker next to a name actually meaningfully increases what a voter knows about a candidate such that they should feel confident that their vote will lead to the kind of schools they desire for the children in their community. (On the impact piece, I stumbled across this University of Georgia study on North Carolina school boards after they became partisan. It’s worth a read.)

Argument #2: School board candidates are already political, so we may as well label them.

Similar to argument one above, this is another one where I don’t dispute the premise but I do dispute that this proposed solution will improve the quality of our local school boards. (After all, isn’t that supposed to be the purpose of any reform in relation to school board elections?)

Of course, everyone who runs for school board is ideological. They will not be making decisions in an entirely nonpartisan fashion. And yet, I am deeply resistant to the idea that there’s zero value in forcing our school board candidates to be nonpartisan and run nonpartisan campaigns. I believe it sends an important signal about the role of a school board.

It is not a political endeavor, even if it must naturally be informed by ideology. It is an educational endeavor whose decisions cannot and should not map easily onto a political party’s framework.

Argument #3: Making them partisan will help conservative candidates get elected to school board positions.

This argument comes direct from Rep. Hunter Smith. It’s more a case of saying the loud part loud since there was no attempt to be quiet about it. He was quoted in Chalkbeat recently saying, “I believe this measure will promote leadership more in line with the values of Indiana’s over 2 million parents who entrust their children to our schools every week.” He also called education “increasingly and covertly political” and said there’s no longer a curriculum “void of slanted cultural endorsements and ideologies.” I’m sorry, which curriculum do you mean? Has he ever read the kind of unit plans most Indiana students are learning from?

I digress. Will making them partisan actually help Republican/conservative candidates? I think so. Go read that UGA study linked above and you’ll see, in a state that isn’t so politically different from Indiana, that after they implemented partisan school board elections they saw a decrease in liberal candidates being elected and a decrease in non-white candidates being elected.

To which I’m sure Rep. Smith would say, “Good!” But to which I would say, “But they were getting elected before!” And now partisanship warped voters’ perceptions of candidates in ways that reduced multiple forms of diversity. To which I can still imagine Rep. Smith saying, “Good!” But again. Do we want more conservative school boards or do we want more effective school boards? Rep. Smith wants conservative school boards.

It sounds like it’s only a happy accident if they’re also effective in carrying out their educational mission. I want effective school boards (though I can imagine Rep. Smith defining an “effective” school board as one that is “conservative”). If you could prove to me that making them more conservative was actually in the best interest of all kids (not just the white conservative ones), then I’d swallow my leftist priors and say great.

But the Bill Already Passed?

Sort of. As of April 23, the bill had passed both chambers. But the legislation was referred back to conference committee to reconcile differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill. Still, for my money, this is a done deal with, if I had to guess, the senate’s version winning the day.

But who knows. Even if this becomes law as I suspect, maybe there’s a silver lining. Maybe I can at long last run that communist campaign for local school board I’ve always dreamed of. I’ll make sure every freshman in the district reads Das Kapital. At least then Rep. Smith can point to one curriculum that’s full of “slanted ideology.”

Correction: Previous versions of the piece incorrectly identified this bill as having passed into law. As of 4/23, it had passed both chambers of the legislature but was referred to conference committee as language in each chamber’s bill did not match.