Handbook·Local government

What a school board actually does

Explainer·Verified 2026-07-10

The answer

A school board hires and can fire the superintendent, adopts the district's annual budget (often the single largest local government budget in a community), sets district policy, and approves the curriculum framework and textbook lists.1 Most people assume school boards write what teachers teach, lesson by lesson. They don't. The superintendent's administration develops curriculum materials and daily instruction within the framework the board approves.2 The board governs, it does not run classrooms. The second fact that breaks the folk model: almost nobody votes in these elections. Turnout across studied races from 2018 to 2022 averaged roughly 5 to 13 percent, and 24 to 40 percent of candidates ran unopposed each year in that period.3 That changed in pockets after 2021, when mask mandates and later curriculum and book-removal disputes turned some races into high-turnout, high-spending contests.

How it actually works

Ballotpedia recorded an all-time high of 545 school board members facing recall in 2021, mostly over COVID-era mandates, followed by 54 recall efforts against 123 members in 2022 as disputes shifted toward curriculum and books.4 The clearest dated, named example: on February 15, 2022, San Francisco held a special election recalling three San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education members, Alison Collins, board president Gabriela Lopez, and Faauuga Moliga, driven by disputes over school renaming, admissions policy, and pandemic reopening. Voters removed all three by wide margins on low turnout (about 36 percent, 179,981 of 499,771 registered voters).5 Mayor London Breed then appointed their replacements, since state law lets the mayor fill vacated seats until the next election.

Who holds the power

The board sets policy and budget and can remove the superintendent. The superintendent's administration runs schools day to day, including hiring principals and staff, and drafts the curriculum materials the board approves at a framework level. State education agencies sit above both, setting academic standards, testing requirements, and funding formulas the district must follow. On teacher contracts, power depends on state law: 34 states and DC require the board to bargain with the teachers' union if a majority of teachers vote for representation, and a board that refuses to bargain in good faith can be sanctioned by a state public employment relations board.6 In other states, bargaining is optional and the board decides whether to engage at all.

Where you come in

  • Public comment at board meetings is a scheduled entry point. See how to speak at a school board meeting.
  • The budget hearing is where competing spending priorities actually get resolved. See how to use a budget hearing.
  • Public records requests can surface curriculum materials and textbook lists.
  • Board elections themselves, often held in odd years with low turnout, are the highest-leverage entry point given how rarely seats are contested.3

Public comment can sway board decisions, but who shows up skews unrepresentative of the district's families as a whole.78

Sources

  1. Iowa Association of School Boards / state affiliates, "Eight Key Roles and Responsibilities of School Boards and Superintendents," 2023. source ↩

  2. U.S. News & World Report, "The School Board, Explained," 2023. source ↩

  3. Journalist's Resource, "School board elections in the US: What research shows," 2024. source ↩ ↩2

  4. Ballotpedia, "School board recalls," 2022. source ↩

  5. KQED, "SF School Board Recall Results: Alison Collins, Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga Recalled," 2022. source ↩

  6. National Council on Teacher Quality, "Collective Bargaining state-by-state map," 2024. source ↩

  7. Einstein, Glick & Palmer, "Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes," 2019. source ↩

  8. California YIMBY, "Unrepresentative Sample: How Public Meetings Weaken Fair Housing," 2022. source ↩