The Race We Can’t Afford to Skip

If you’re lucky, eventually they trust an adult enough to explain what’s going on. What happens next depends on many things, including whether the adults in that building have the support and freedom to help. That might not sound like something connected to politics. But in many ways, it is.

Some of the decisions that shape what happens in schools are made by people most voters know very little about — school board members. If you’re like many voters, you’ve probably gotten to the local section of your ballot and realized you didn’t recognize a single name. We pay attention to the races for president, governor and Congress — maybe mayor or city council. But school board races often get far less notice, perhaps because we don’t always realize how much power school boards have over the policies and resources that shape our schools. But these local elections are enormously consequential, and they deserve a closer look. 

School boards help set the direction for a district. 

They adopt budgets, hire and evaluate superintendents, establish policies and make decisions that ultimately shape school culture, safety and opportunity. Those decisions show up in schools every day.

They show up in which books are available in the library. They show up in the policies teachers are expected to follow. They show up in what happens when a student is bullied and whether educators feel supported when they step in. And they show up in whether a child walks into school believing, I belong here just as I am.

For a lot of kids, school is the first place where they’re regularly around people unlike themselves. They sit next to kids whose families look different from theirs, who practice different religions, come from different cultures, have different abilities or understand their identities differently.

A good education isn’t only about learning to read, solve an equation or understand history. It is also about learning how to listen, how to be curious, how to disagree, how to develop empathy and how to see the humanity in someone whose life may look nothing like your own.

But increasingly, across the country, decisions are being made about which books students can read, whose history is taught, which families and identities are represented and what educators are permitted to discuss in their classrooms. Shouldn’t every student have the right to an education that helps them understand themselves and others, and gives them the knowledge and critical-thinking skills to navigate the world?

I have spent all of my adult life working with educators and young people, first in my own classroom and now through the HRC Foundation’s Welcoming Schools program. I have seen what happens when the adults in a school system send a clear message that every student matters. I have also seen what happens when they don’t.

Students take notice – and so should we. 

Students notice which families appear in the books they read. They notice which students are defended when someone uses a slur in the hallway. They notice whether a teacher feels comfortable answering an honest question. They notice when an adult steps in and when an adult looks the other way. And they really notice when adults speak about people like them as if their very existence is something to debate. This breaks my heart.

For LGBTQ+ young people, those signals can carry particular weight. For decades, I’ve watched kids figure out who they are. Middle schoolers will humble you very quickly. They can be hilarious and frustrating and awkward and sometimes unbelievably kind. They are trying on identities, testing boundaries and constantly watching the adults around them for clues about what kind of people they can become.

And underneath all of that middle school bravado, they are asking some pretty fundamental questions:

The adults in their lives play a big role in how those questions get answered.

Sometimes it is a teacher who quietly makes room at lunchtime. A counselor who notices a student hasn’t been themselves lately. A librarian who hands a kid a book and says, “I thought you might like this.” A principal who makes it unmistakably clear that bullying won’t be tolerated. Those moments can look small from the outside — but to a kid, they can mean everything.

But the responsibility for creating schools where those moments are possible doesn’t rest only with the adults students see every day. It also belongs to the people sitting behind the dais at a school board meeting. School board members may never meet the student who is afraid to go to lunch. They may never know the child who stopped raising their hand or the teacher who wonders whether they’ll be supported for stepping in when a student is targeted. Yet the policies they adopt help shape all of that. That is why student well-being has to be part of how we think about school board elections.

Most families don’t sit around the dinner table talking about school board governance. But they absolutely care about what happens when their child is bullied. They care whether their child feels safe. They care whether a teacher has the tools and support to step in when something is wrong. They care whether their child is learning in a community that prepares them not just for a test but for the world beyond the classroom. All of it comes back to the school board.

Because somewhere in your community, a kid is going to walk through the doors of a school tomorrow morning carrying a backpack, probably a phone they aren’t supposed to be looking at — and all the complicated questions that come with growing up.

They may never know the names of the people sitting on their school board. But every day, in ways both big and small, they will live with the decisions those people make.