Kate Nyegaard was the first person who ever spoke to me about serving on a school board. Nyegaard is a civic leader in arts, education, and healthcare in her hometown of Modesto, California, where she served on the Modesto City Schools Board of Education from 1993-2005. She also happens to be George Lucas’s sister.

I met Kate when I was doing some consulting work for the George Lucas Educational Foundation about a dozen years ago. Kate, a Foundation board member, was attending an event I’d helped to plan for a group of teacher advisors and contributors at Skywalker Ranch. 

During a very enjoyable chat about many topics in education, she said to me, “You should run for school board.”

It must be said that part of my brain was distracted with I AM STANDING NEXT TO DARTH VADER’S ACTUAL LIGHTSABER OMG OMG OMG. But the rest of my brain had the following immediate reactions:

1. I cannot imagine anything more boring than a school board meeting. And
2. I have two children under the age of five. I’ve been wondering what I could add to fill all my empty time, LOL.

But a decade later, I ran for school board in Arlington, Virginia. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and one you should consider, too.

Why serve on a school board?

Simply put, it’s a really rewarding job. You’ll learn an incredible amount about public schools and about your community. I’ve worked for about 30 years in education, and I’m still learning new things every week because I’m a school board member. 

If you’re an introvert like I am, the role gives you an opportunity to get to know people you might never meet otherwise. I talk with parents, teachers, students, school bus drivers, principals, school safety coordinators, nonprofit leaders, cafeteria workers, retirees, civic association members, social service providers, social justice advocates, the superintendent, school counselors, faith communities, scout troops, and more. These connections have been wonderful, even when (and maybe especially when) we’ve met over something contentious and found some common ground.

Best of all, you’ll get to be useful, in ways that really matter. George Lucas says, “Education is the single most important endeavor of the human race.” I believe this is true. He urges, “We have to plan for our collective future -- and the first step begins with the social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children.” School boards are the stewards of public education, accountable to their communities for the care and development of our youngest citizens. 

What's the job like?

School boards typically have four primary responsibilities:

• Setting policies that govern the operation of the school district,
• Approving operating and capital improvement budgets,
• Hiring and managing the superintendent, and
• Engaging with the communities they represent.

Additionally, in many parts of the country, school boards have independent taxing authority to generate revenue for school operations. In Virginia, we don’t.

School boards govern but do not directly manage the school system–that’s the superintendent’s job. It’s sometimes difficult to make that distinction, which can lead to micromanaging.

The other tension is that school boards are not help desks. (See above note about governance versus operations.) Board members hear from parents who are concerned about something that happened to their children at school; district employees who would like to see a particular change in their work assignments; community members who live adjacent to schools and want relief from bus and car traffic; and more. As a school board member, you’ll want to encourage people to work with the decision makers who are most closely connected to their concern, like their child’s counselor, the school principal, or the human resources team. You’ll also want to consider that there is often more to the story than you might initially understand. 

That said, as a school board member I try to remain curious and look for patterns in what I’m hearing. Are multiple people raising the same issue? Is it repeating over time? Does it point to a policy that’s not being followed, a policy that might need to be changed, a part of the budget that should be adjusted, or something to be discussed as part of the superintendent’s annual evaluation cycle? If so, then it’s a matter for the school board. 

My day-to-day activities as a school board member include things like:

• Preparing for and participating in the regular public meetings of the school board (every two weeks, anywhere from 2-5 hours per meeting).
• Preparing for and participating in regular closed meetings of the school board. By law, we can only hold closed meetings on certain topics, like personnel issues or confidential legal matters. 
• Talking and emailing with other school board members, usually multiple times each week.
• Meeting one-on-one with the superintendent each month, and sharing questions and ideas more frequently as needed.
• Attending meetings and community events, particularly for my “assigned” schools. In Arlington, each school board member serves a liaison to a handful of specific schools, and the assignments rotate annually. We also liaise with specific civic associations.
• Engaging with citizen advisory groups. Advisory groups share feedback and recommendations with the whole board, but individual board members act as liaisons to one or more advisory groups, attending meetings and talking with committee members.
• Conferring and collaborating with county board members. In Arlington, the chairs and vice chairs of each board gather for monthly joint leadership meetings, but it’s also helpful for individual board members to get to know each other one-on-one.
• Reading weekly updates from the superintendent, which usually include answers to questions gathered from school board members over the previous week.
• Reading other information shared by the superintendent, his leadership team, and others within the school district; asking questions or setting up meetings as needed to learn more.
• Studying what is happening at the federal and state levels that will influence how the district operates.
• Researching what other school divisions are doing so that we can learn from and adapt promising practices. 
• Reading, listening to, and responding to community input via email, in meetings, and in one-on-one conversations.

To a certain extent state law and district policies dictate what school board members can and can’t do. Beyond that, it’s up to each school board member to determine how they’ll perform the role, which is supposed to be a part-time job. I encourage you to talk to multiple school board members about their experiences, as they may have different perspectives from what I’m sharing here. 

How to prepare

I recommend talking with current and former school board members to learn more about the job. Many (including me!) are happy to share what it’s like. 

Next, I’d suggest a little soul-searching. Why do you want to serve on the school board? If it’s for a very specific reason–say, you are upset that your school division ended its French Immersion program last year–you might want to reconsider running. That narrow motivation won’t fuel you through a full term of service. 

You’ll need to have another source of income, since most school board members earn very little (and in fact, they are still volunteers in certain parts of the country). In Arlington, school board members earn $25,000 a year. If you’re employed full-time, consider how you’ll balance your “regular work” schedule with school board commitments. I work 9-5 on weekdays, and I’m lucky to have an employer that offers some flexibility for the school board business that needs to happen during those hours.

​You’ll want to learn more about your local school division before you seek a seat on the school board. Look at publicly-available achievement data, program evaluations, advisory committee reports, school climate surveys, and the district’s strategic plan. Attend public meetings and get involved as a volunteer, as you are able. Talk to other, longtime volunteers, community leaders, school division employees, and activists. Ask them “What’s been your experience with our public schools?” and “What would you change?” Ask them to introduce you to one other person so you can keep listening and learning.

In Arlington and many other locales, school boards are elected, not appointed (fun fact: Virginia was the last state to allow–but not mandate–elected school boards, in 1992). This means you’ll have to become a candidate and run for office. Campaigning felt really intimidating to me: it took me a full year to get comfortable with the idea and learn what campaigning would really entail. 

As a candidate, you’ll worry that you need a perfect answer to every question about your school system. While it’s true that you’ll want to sound knowledgeable about your school district, you can’t know everything about all parts of its operation. (As a board member, I still don’t.)  And the issues that come up during your campaign may recede from the public consciousness, only to be replaced by entirely new issues in the next campaign cycle. 

I think it’s more important that you describe how you will go about learning the issues and weighing multiple options as a school board member, so that voters can be confident that you are reasonable, open-minded, and willing to put in the work.

Above all, people want to know what motivates you, what you value, and what you hope for. My favorite question as a candidate was, “What would you want to be different by the end of your term?” 

If that question lights you up–and if you believe that public education is important to our individual and collective futures–I hope you’ll raise your hand to serve on a school board.

Earlier this month, the Arlington Dems held a meeting to discuss the future of the School Board Caucus endorsement process. At the end of the meeting, voting members cast ballots to determine whether to continue the Caucus. I voted No.

I actually spoke near the beginning of the meeting to advocate in favor of continuing the Caucus, but only with significant reforms attached. I had done some careful study of how other local jurisdictions elect their School Board members, and the data I’d examined had convinced me that Caucus-with-reform was the best approach.

At the meeting I listened carefully and I grew increasingly uncomfortable because of what I was hearing. If I had been called to speak closer to the end of the meeting, I’m not sure if I would have stood up and said what I did.

Here’s what I heard: many people (mostly white) speaking in favor of the Caucus because they believe it protects all of us against a lot of potential harms that could be inflicted by those on the far right. The idea is that the Caucus process ensures we will have committed progressive advocates serving on the School Board.

Is it possible that Arlington voters would choose committed progressive advocates even without a Caucus? We don’t know, because we haven’t tried it in a long time.

Here’s what else I heard at the meeting: other people, including many people of color, sharing how the Caucus is divisive and doing harm to our community at a time when we really need to be pulling together.

When I assigned myself my “Caucus research project” last fall, I thought I could puzzle out the answer to the Caucus question with data. 

Listening to the speakers at that meeting, I finally realized that the answer to this particular question wasn’t in any data I was analyzing.

The speakers at that meeting made me see that at its very heart, this question is about white people needing to cede and share power with people of color, and that doing so is not a zero-sum game. 

They reminded me that hearing and valuing the voices and lived experiences of people of color means that when many of them are telling me that I am perpetuating a system that does them harm, I need to prioritize that over any “what if” scenarios that make me afraid to dismantle the system.

I honestly don’t know if abandoning the Caucus will lead to the potential harms that I and others are worried about. I concede that it very well could. But what I do see now is that holding on to the Caucus comes at too great a cost.

I think politically savvy people, like so many in the Arlington Democrats, are used to analyzing scenarios and tactics and strategizing about which ones will lead to victory. All of which is important, but in this case I’m not sure we’re clear on what “victory” really means. 

The speakers on February 2 called me back to what the real victory could be: being brave enough to act out of conviction rather than fear of the unknowns, and making ourselves vulnerable in the best possible way by letting go of some of our power. Those speakers reminded me to trust that in the long term, the dividends of doing so will be greater and more meaningful to our community than any near-term political wins or protections we’d score by preserving the status quo.

To the speakers who shared their concerns about the Caucus, including Wilma Jones, Zakiya Worthey, Jamie Abrams and others: I really needed to hear what you said, so I thank you.

To those who feel like my change of heart is “too little, too late”—I can only agree that yes, it took me a while to land in this spot. But that hasn’t been for lack of interest or careful study: I care deeply about our community, its public education system and its governance.

​To those who are concerned that my change of heart signals that I will vacillate on important issues that come before the School Board, I would say that I value leaders who are willing to listen carefully and change their minds based on what they learn, and I hope you do, too.