About Us

Our Mission

School Board Spotlight (SBS) shines a light on school board members who are putting politics ahead of America’s students. SBS empowers grassroots organizations with information on school board members, districts, and populations served so they know where to focus their efforts around school boards in a strategic and impactful way.

 

Together, we are building a long-term, data-informed strategy to protect and support school board members to lead and pass policies that serve the educational needs of all students.

 

The Problem

Across the United States, school board members steward $800 billion in funds, serving 51 million students across more than 13,000 school districts. They are the closest policymakers to our students with critical decision-making power on curriculum, school funding, and other academic, legal, and financial issues that affect student lives and public education. In 2021, the ideological right began using so-called “critical race theory” as a means to organize conservative activists and voters ahead of the midterm elections. Since then, they’ve been waging a culture war around a so-called “parent’s rights” agenda, banning books, undermining educators who teach our nation’s full history, attacking transgender students, and more. These attacks unnecessarily politicize the conversation around high quality public education and compromise the ability of school board members to represent their communities and pass policies that support all students’ pursuit of high quality public education.