Contentious disagreements and clashes at meetings led to dozens of resignations by school board members
| Candidates for the school board in Minnetonka, Minn., participate in student-led forum on Oct. 18. Courtesy of Amin Rahmatullah |
By Elizabeth Shockman
In some ways, it’s a quiet election this year. Some school districts are asking voters to approve referendums to pay for operating or capital costs. Just over two dozen districts have their regularly scheduled school board elections.
But for an odd year, Minnesota School Boards Association executive director Kirk Schneidawind said there are an unusually high number of district special elections.
“We have a number of special elections around filling vacant seats. We’ve seen a number of school board members have resigned or moved on to special positions and as a result it’s going to require some elections,” Schneidawind said. “It certainly is a number that is higher than normal.”
According to Schneidawind, nearly 70 school board members have resigned their positions this year — triple the resignations in a normal year. The vacant seats are, in large part, the result of contentious disagreements over things like masking, COVID-19 policies, and critical race theory, or CRT.
Violent school board meetings and threats toward school board members over these issues have caused dozens of board leaders to quit their positions. And now, Schneidawind said, these issues seem to be at the center of many school board campaigns and platforms. [Continue reading] | |
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