History of School Boards & Why They’re Under Attack
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Hello again, unravelers! Danielle Ford here, former school board trustee of CCSD, the 5th largest school district in the nation.
In this episode of Unraveling Education, you will learn the entire history of school boards and it’s way more exciting than it sounds. Like, it is wild.
You might remember from the episode: “Storytime: Diary of a New School Board Trustee” that the main roles of the school board are to set the vision for the school district, oversee the spending of tax payer dollars, and hire a superintendent to manage the district’s operations and hold that person accountable.
This episode will cover how local school boards developed and why they are so important to you and to your voting rights. I’ll begin to explain how all public school boards in America are under attack. Then fill you in on the current state of the Clark County School Board and the recent events that have chipped away at the trustees’ power even more.
The information in this episode was super difficult to put together because there’s so much interesting and scandalous stuff related to the history of public education that I so desperately wanted to include. Really important stuff that we all need to know about. But I think it makes sense to first cover the history of school boards thoroughly, which is honestly so fascinating, at least I think so.
That’s actually another reason I struggled with this content. I’m not entirely sure this is uber fascinating outside of my own mind. So if you make it all the way through and find that you enjoyed it or learned anything at all, please tell me in the YouTube comments. And if you hated it and you were bored, you can let me know by leaving a cricket emoji in the comments. It’s OK, I can take it.
Alright then, let’s get into it…
Our story begins in the 1500s with the Discovery of America. We all remember learning that “in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”, and you know, found land. Despite that land already being home to millions of humans, he was still like “this is NEW land, that I discovered!”
I’m using this example to establish a reference point on the timeline, not because the story taught to all of us about Columbus was in any way true.
Now let’s fast-forward through the blood baths and conquesting of native americans, and the starting of the slave trade, to when the first settlers arrived on the Mayflower and the 13 colonies were formed and everyone celebrated.
It’s now been more than 100 years since “Columbus discovered America”. Not gonna go anymore into this but for a re-enactment/how it should’ve ended check out the Thanksgiving scene in Addams Family values.
Now let’s learn what Early American Education was like in the 1600s:
At first, the children from rich families of New England colonies received private schooling. Parents would either send their children overseas to get educated in England or Scotland, and by children I mean sons, or hire private tutors for their children/sons, or they would homeschool them.
As the colonies grew, the individual towns were mandated to build schools. They used township funds, and the labor of the townspeople, or the laymen, to build the first one-room schoolhouses.
But despite these schools being built by the town and for the town, they were not available to everyone. Children of rich families were invited to attend and pay tuition. They were essentially using public money to build private schools.
For a long time, the rich colonials had their private schoolhouses, private tutors, and private boarding schools, while different types of public education emerged for everyone else.
By the mid-1600s there were many forms of public education taking place (for boys):
The colonies were operating independently and a majority were still heavily influenced by the Church of England. Public education was put under the scope of the church and their religious leaders were the teachers.
It was required for all parents and masters to send their children and the children of their servants to church buildings where they would receive both academic and religious instruction.
Some colonies allowed companies to govern local education. The company would pay for the school building and for schoolmasters to educate the children/sons of their workers.
For children of indigent parents and orphans, there were no public school options available. These children were apprenticed to artisans and craftsmen for free labor.
There was a law that said that they must also instruct the apprentice in reading and writing but no one was really making sure that happened.
Now it feels like I’m forgetting some humans. We covered the rich folks, the working men, servants, indigenous people, … oh that’s right- slaves. Yeah, there were no education options for enslaved black Americans. In fact it was illegal to help an enslaved person to learn to read or write.
So, there’s a lot more that could be said about this, and we’ll certainly cover it in the future, but remember the purpose of this episode is to understand when and why school boards were formed.
So that is what public education was, unfair and unstructured, and it continued for decades as governments evolved and expanded.
In the mid-1600s, the hot topics at town hall meetings were about public schools. There was a demand for unity in education among the colonies, and for all children to learn to read.
But there were differing opinions about who should be in charge: should it be the churches, the companies, or the government?
Eventually, some town officials in Massachussettes determined that since they were already doing the government, they should do schools, too. They titled themselves “selectmen”. This was the earliest type of school board.
They passed a law that said every town with 100 families must have at least 1 school and it would be overseen by the selectmen. At the time the law was called “The Old Deluder Satan Act” because, Satan’s goal was to keep men from reading the scriptures. Whatever works I guess.
That law is now known as the Massachusetts Law of 1647
Over the next 100 years, Public education was anything but united. There was major hostility and rivalry among local governments, private schools, and religious schools. The biggest factor contributing to the controversy was the fact that religious schools were receiving public funds.
More and more children were attending schools and the increasing demand became too much for the selectmen to manage. Temporary committees were appointed to assist with finding teachers and building schoolhouses.
As schools increased, the committees were made permanent. It became their role to recruit school masters, provide lodging for them, and keep the school heated and maintained.
Over time, the role of the school committee expanded. Members were responsible for visiting the schools, ensuring instruction was being given and that students were learning, and keeping classrooms supplied with quills and ink.
Textbooks became a thing around 1750. The Old Deluder Satan Act and the school board-like committees had been around for over a century. These new textbooks were not cheap and the school committee had the additional responsibilities of selecting books and raising additional funds from the town to purchase them.
Committee members also began to reward competent schoolmasters and fire inefficient ones. They also acted as the first truancy officers, by seeking out parents who failed or refused to send their children to school, and imposing fines on them.
As the population in cities and rural areas grew, it became difficult for one committee to travel and manage all of the schoolhouses. This spurred the formation of the school “district” system, and members were appointed to the committees of all the new school districts.
Over the next couple decades, several legislators, at different times, attempted to replace the committees with School boards, referring to them as – “a board of Guardians”. Guardians who were to be elected by the people, and whose job it was to hire teachers and pay their salaries out of taxes laid upon by the inhabitants.
But the concept of the people electing committee members was wild at the time. The legislators who had foresight were deemed “too radical” and the bills failed in each state they were presented.
Then a little something called the American Revolution happened. We’ve all seen Hamilton. We know how that went down. America gained it’s freedom from British rule and religion.
Nothing about public education was written into the Constitution. That’s not because the founding fathers didn’t support it, but because they cared so much about it that they settled on any decisions yet.
They debated each other about public education for years. Their concerns weren’t as much about instruction but about who should hold the power over what children will be able to learn and do.
It was Thomas Jefferson who convinced his Founding Father friends that the power of educational decisions and policy should belong to the local community.
His reasoning being that “with every changing federal administration would come a shift to the curriculum based solely on political agendas, rather than on the welfare of the children and the future of america.”
Jefferson pitched the concept of “Local governments of schools”, which would allow voters to elect a group of people from their community to run the schools and guard the public funds. It was the exact same radical idea of “Guardians” that failed decades earlier.
“And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, imma compel him to include women in the sequel… work!” 3 points if you know who said that. No cheating. Put your score in the comments.
It was pretty chaotic there for a minute with different committees and rules for governing districts while adjustments were made. States and districts were trying to figure out how to add in these new school governments. It wasn’t until 1817 that there was the first record of a school board functioning as intended, that was publicly elected and had control of taxpayer funds. That was in the city of Boston.
Then it was the wild west of school boards, literally. There were no universal rules or regulations. How many school days, how many hours, which children were allowed to attend, the qualifications of teachers… everything was determined by individual school districts, and districts right next door were operating vastly differently from each other.
Gradually, state constitutions and federal legislation began to set standards for quality and uniformity of instruction for all boards to follow, while allowing the boards to remain locally elected and operated.
For the next few decades, all school districts were working out the kinks. People began to realize a need for board members who had specific qualifications, like actual knowledge in education, and experience teaching students, but with boards being publicly elected there was no way to ensure that. On average, school boards had about 12 members, but some had up to 50 because they just kept electing people until they had some qualified ones.
Then districts were like, “We need a better system.” So the boards began hiring education specialists to work alongside them and lead departments within the school district. Next they hired district managers, who also had a background in education, to keep all the departments organized and functioning together.
Although school boards could operate however they wanted within the parameters set by the state and the federal government, they all were pretty much choosing to do the same things, most likely because they were communicating with each other and sharing best practices.
The elected boards organically became much smaller because they now had a team of education experts to help them run the school districts.
So check this out- in the years 1836-1837, a handful of superintendents were appointed by school boards in large cities of different states to replace the district managers. The timeframe is so small, that it’s undetermined who was first.
This caused a lot of confusion and controversy because the role of superintendent had never existed in the educational landscape until now. But because those boards did it, other school boards starting doing it. And then since everyone was doing it, it just became the norm for each district to have a few board members and also a superintendent.
This piques my interest quite a bit. Firstly because what if any of the school boards had decided “You know, we actually don’t want a superintendent? Maybe we want to test ummm a team of 3 teachers acting as the district manager and see how that works?” or “Maybe we want to name that job something else?”
The only thing that had been deemed absolutely essential to protect education and public funds was the school board. Thomas Jefferson was not like “To protect education and communities from national political agendas, we will need a board of guardians elected by the people, for the people- oh and this other random person too that will be there and also do the same things as the board and maybe even with more authority than the board.” Ok? No that was not the intent.
I haven’t been able to find many details about these early superintendents, but honestly what are the odds of this position popping up out of nowhere, in several states, at the same time, and with trustees who don’t know each other, all citing the same reasons for needing a new position called superintendent?
Each trustee said something similar to: “To execute my duties fully would take two whole work days per week and I just don’t have the time.”
It’s the 1840’s, public education was rising and so was the growth of cities. School districts in big cities now found themselves financially in big business. So they started patterning education based on the corporate form of an organization.
The school board became the legislative body, making policies, and the superintendent was considered the CEO, responsible for the administration and operations of the school district.
Discussions began to emerge in business circles and questions were presented to legislators about: “Should the the pattern of having schools controlled by locally elected officials be abandoned and the power given to 1 person, the superintendent, as the expert?”
That was nearly 200 years ago, and yet that question continues to be brought up by organizations of superintendents and companies that do business with superintendents. And every time, the public has responded with a clear “No!”
But despite hearing, “No” for literally 200 years, they keep asking. Like bro, it might be time for a conversation about consent. We said no. No means no.
Which is another thing that I find fascinating. Throughout all the changes with education, society, law, and regardless of personal opinions, events, the news… the general public agrees on this issue.
The general consensus has never been, “Yeah that’s fine. We don’t want the choice to elect folks to act as trustees on our behalf. Who needs guardians of the community’s education and public funds? We’d rather just let someone else do that. Perhaps someone of a large corporation’s choosing.”
Throughout those 200 ish years, school board trustees and legislators heard the argument and agreed there was a need for education experts to be involved in governing. So they allowed superintendents to delegate aspects and authority of their role to mid-level administrators and expand the system.
First there were principals, then vice principals, curriculum coordinators, teaching strategists, deputy superintendents, associates, consultants, legal experts, numerous superintendent-appointed committees… the list goes on and on and that’s how the administrative portion of school districts were formed.
This is where we’re going to end our story about the history of school boards but we are not done yet. I have a few things to say, an important update for you, as well as some action steps…
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Thank you so much. Back to my regularly scheduled opinions…
So the superintendent of a school district holds a lot of power. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s the fact of the matter. If a superintendent is doing great things, working well with the board, making solid fiscal decisions, and is beloved by their community, wonderful!
But imagine this… imagine that CEOs of huge education companies were somehow able to get a person of their choosing hired as superintendent. If this person had promised to follow their orders, adopt their policies, and buy their stuff… who would actually hold the power? Who would actually be running that school district?
As you think on that. Here are some questions to ponder:
-What would that kind of school district look like?
-Would most of the spending go back into the local economy, or would it go to outside vendors?
-How would a superintendent who was essentially a billionaire’s puppet communicate with the local media?
-How would that superintendent treat the community?
…And most importantly, who could stop them?
Something that’s blown my mind as I’ve been organizing this episode and getting deep into the timeline, is that public education system as we know has only been around for about 200 years, right? That seems like a lot- but also think how fast a year goes by.
It took 300 years just to get to the point of creating a cohesive education system that everyone could agree upon.
Education went from schoolhouses to a new radical idea of school boards, boards consisting of 50 people, to hiring experts to help lead, to superintendents sprouting out of nowhere, to districts operating as a business, and the creation of hundreds of positions under the superintendent, across the entire country, which is huge. in a very short amount of time.
But yet so many people are like, “It’s not working, the public education system is broken, let’s burn it to the ground”. Of course, it’s not working, it’s barely gotten started.
And included in that short amount of time, the 200 years of public education as we know, it is population growth, major technological advancements, huge societal changes, the formation of teacher and labor unions, the desegregation of schools, state and federal mandates on education like standardized testing, new laws to protect students like the individuals with disabilities act, and then having to continuously adapt the whole system to keep up with the internet, cyber security attacks, and then a world-wide pandemic.
And while many people have been working and testing and tweaking and fighting to try to build an educational system that works, others have actively been sabotaging it the entire time.
Trust that we’re going to talk a lot more about how this but I want to give an example of one of these folks’ favorite method of sabotage. It is the spreading of false narratives in an attempt to get the general public to turn on public education in general. And it’s effective.
You may have heard that public education was created during the Industrial Revolution to produce factory workers. You might believe that but can’t really remember why. I used to believe this, too. And I can remember reading or hearing it over a decade ago from a lot of personal development authors, thought leaders and entrepreneurs whom I respect. But now I know that they’re wrong. And when I think back, I’m like “Why did I just accept that as the truth?” I can remember being told that but I don’t remember hearing any actual facts around it.
When I went looking for facts, here’s what I discovered…
In 1805, this was during the Industrial Revolution and in that time frame when publicly elected school boards were beginning to form and it was the wild west of school boards. Well there were many forms of schooling attempted, and most didn’t last long because of education becoming regulated.
So- A bunch of wealthy business men formed the New York Public School Society and raised a bunch of money saying that they were going to provide education for all the poor children. Everyone was like “Aww… take my money”. The school used what’s called the “Lancasterian” model, in which one “master” can teach hundreds of students in a single room. The 1 master/teacher would give a lesson to the older students only, who then to pass it down to the students slightly younger than them, and so on until the youngest students received the lesson. The purpose of these schools was to teach discipline and obedience qualities that factory owners want in their workers. They ended up opening 4 schools before the regulations of the new government caught up with them and the Board of Education ended up taking them over. So yeah, 1 rogue group of industrialists tried to fund the education of poor children in a way that appeared to be helping the children but would only be helping their bottom line. But then the actual public education system was like, stop.
Somehow the narrative has been passed through a game of telephone that the current public education system was intended to operate like that. That is not how the public school system operates. That’s never been how the public school system operates.
But this idea makes people mad and so it has been purposefully told over and over, even though it’s an absolute lie. That’s the definition of propaganda: the spreading of rumors, half-truths, or lies, to influence public opinion in helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.
So from now on if you hear anyone mention the Industrial Revolution and education in the same sentence, you can be like, “Nope. That is misinformation. Please stop spreading propoganda. You are not helping.”
I think we can all agree that public education is far from perfect and there is room to disagree about what and why it’s not perfect but really… why is anybody surprised? It would be a miracle if public education was perfect or even operating smoothly in only 200 years. We are still in beta mode.
We’re still in the history of public education and the history of school boards!
In 200 years, your children’s children’s great grandchildren will be watching a hologram, or reading a book from their contact lens, or inserting a chip into their brain to learn the history of school boards and they’ll be learning about right now. And they’ll be like, “Whoa this is wild!” and then one of them will make a podcast about it.
And listen.. I swear, in 200 years from now, if I find out that certain people are still trying to get rid of the people’s right to elect guardians of Education, the school board, and everybody has not yet collectively told them to kick rocks, I will be so pissed. Like, that could legit cause me to haunt someone.
So listen, if you are on a school board, employed by a school board or school district, planning on running for school board, involved in school board campaigns, voting for school boards, or using your voice in any way to affect school boards then you are part of the history of school boards. We are still in the early stages of public education, and everything we do matters.
Let’s hone in on the present state of school boards now.
I hope by now I’ve convinced you that to attack the power of a locally elected school board is to attack voters and their communities.
The unfortunate truth is that coordinated attacks are happening to public school boards in many districts across the country, and a lot of them have been successful.
Billionaires who aim to control the future of education are giving lots of money to politicians in various government positions in exchange for replacing publicly elected school board members with appointed members of their choosing. They also fund the campaigns of school board candidates and give them cushy jobs and perks, in exchange for hiring superintendents of their choosing who will follow their orders.
In Nevada, for decades, individual legislators have been drafting bills that would change the makeup of the school board from publicly elected trustees to appointed ones. The bills usually didn’t get much attention from the full legislature and they’de be dropped early, but they’ve been making more headway. In 2022 appointed school boards were closer than ever. Many pro-public education advocates including myself spoke against it.
It was the Clark County teacher’s union, CCEA, specifically their executive director, John Vellardita who tried to push this through. The bill would’ve changed the board from 7 publicly elected trustees to 4, completely change district voter lines. It would’ve added 3 appointed trustees, 1 of which would be appointed by John Vellardita.
Teacher’s unions are usually pro- publicly elected school boards. Even the Nevada State Education Association and the National Association Education of Southern Nevada showed up to speak against this bill.
Remember towards the end of the Storytime episode: Diary of a New Trustee, how I told you that CCEA was sus and I’d give examples later? Here’s one of them.
That bill did not progress but there was an appetite from the community to get a few appointed people onto the board to find out why the trustees don’t have any power and what is happening.
Nobody had any faith in the board members or the superintendent at this point and I don’t blame them. So what the legislature did instead was to leave the makeup of the 7 publicly elected board members alone, but add 4 non-voting trustees to the board, to be appointed by the 4 largest local municipalities in Clark County: The Clark County Commission, The Las Vegas City Council, The City of North Las Vegas, and The City of Henderson.
So even though these members wouldn’t have voting power during public board meetings, they would still receive training, attend all the briefings and closed sessions, be able to request information, and participate in discussions during public board meetings. They would be able to take information back to their municipality and also be a voice for the municipality in the same way elected trustees are supposed to be a voice for the voters.
First thing January 2024, those 4 new non-voting appointed trustees were sworn in early.
I told you in the storytime episode that the superintendent and a majority of the current school board are out of control, reckless, make up rules, and do whatever they want without thought about optics or unintended consequences, right?
So it should not come as a surprise that the first thing the superintendent and majority of the board did was to change the policies to take away the little bit of power those newly-appointed trustees had.
The new trustees will not be able to bring any business to the board, question any purchasing at public meetings, request for items to be pulled, nothing. The assemblymembers who passed that bill and the councils who appointed them are pissed, as they should be.
We’ll cover this more as it evolves because like I said earlier, this is part of the history of school boards. History is happening now.
I know this is all a lot to take in but if you’re feeling unraveled and wanting to be part of the solutions, here are some action steps:
- Pay attention to who supports publicly elected school boards and who doesn’t
- Research your local board members to check for any large donations made to their campaigns by billionaires, or if their employers benefit by contracting with the school district or by the school district failing
- Inform others in your community about the threat to school boards and your findings
- Consider running for school board or getting involved in the campaigns of pro-public education candidates who will fight for the board to keep their power
For those of you in Clark County, we’ll be covering the upcoming school board elections deeply and there will be ways for you to get involved in campaigns, so keep an eye out for that.
If you’re not in Clark County I’d love to know where you’re watching or listening from and what the state of your local school board is. Is it elected, appointed, or some sort of hybrid? What’s the happs? Let me know in the YouTube comments.
In the next storytime episode I’ll walk you through how I started to learn these things were happening and what I found when I investigated my fellow board members, and the previous board members.
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Thanks for tuning in and keep pulling those threads!