’Vastly different than a year ago:’ Fewer filings for school board candidate seats in Minnesota

Minnesota’s normally sedate school board elections have seen a rise in competition, contention, spending and outside influence over the last few years. But the intensity of those contests appears to be abating. 

That’s according to the Minnesota School Boards Association, which tracks candidate filings across the state. 

“It’s vastly different than a year or even two years ago,” said Greg Abbott, the MSBA’s director of communication. “A couple years ago we had some districts with 18 people filing for three seats. One district had 21 people filing for four seats. It was double digits in a lot of places. We’re not seeing that this year.”

Most of Minnesota’s more than 300 school districts hold elections on even years. Since the pandemic, those elections have been hotly contested in many districts. But this year there are 30 districts with not enough people filing to fill the seats.

Abbott believes this is a result of politically motivated candidates realizing their fears over things like critical race theory, commonly referred to as CRT, are unfounded. 

“Maybe a lot of people who ran before and maybe ran on a certain issue have found out, you know, schools don’t really teach CRT, or there really isn’t kitty litter boxes in the schools,” Abbott said. “Some of these political things that seeped in, that fired up people, and they found out, well, that’s not the case. It’s just school boards trying to do the best to help all of their students.” 

This election Abbott also expects to see fewer districts asking for voter approval on referendums. In part, this is due to districts avoiding asking for money during presidential election years to avert the possibility of their requests getting lost in the onslaught of national political news. But it’s also partly due to recent changes in the Minnesota legislature that allow school boards to renew operating levies without going through voter approval. 

“We used to see maybe 10 to 12 a year go through just to renew their levies. They don't have to do that anymore. The board can approve it,” Abbott said. “That's why there’s partly a few less of the operating levies going through.”

Training school board candidates

While the school board association foresees a decline in the intensity of school board politics, the two groups in Minnesota that have invested in training school board candidates remain active. 

The School Board Integrity Project, which launched last year and leans progressive, has expanded its work beyond Minnesota and is now actively supporting 150 candidates in 13 states. It says it still sees the bulk of its work focused in Minnesota where at least 60 candidates across the state have taken its pledge and will be listed on its website.

Kyrstin Schuette, who founded the School Board Integrity Project, said she believes the intensity has fallen this year in Minnesota’s school board races, but she insists that contention around education issues remains – especially when it comes to races for state and national seats. 

“We have definitely seen a little bit of a taking down of the temperature,” Schuette said. “But in that same space, we’re starting to see more and more of that rhetoric starting to trickle up the ballot.”

Schuette said she still expects contention in about 30 of Minnesota’s more than 300 district races this year and her organization is supporting candidates running in those districts.    

“We believe that we have incredibly strong candidates there, and frankly, we can kind of push back against some of the rhetoric that’s been going on over the last couple of years and really focus on candidates and the success of students,” Schuette said.

The Minnesota Parents Alliance, which launched in 2022 and leans conservative, did not respond to an MPR News request for an interview. Organization emails sent in recent days have encouraged candidates to file for school board races and advertised upcoming “campaign school” training opportunities.

Correction (Aug. 14, 2024): An earlier version of this story misstated the number of candidates working with the School Board Integrity Project. That number has been corrected.

Correction (Aug. 16, 2024): An earlier version of this story misstated the number of districts that don’t have enough people filing to fill the seats. That number has been corrected.