Cover Story

THE FIRST BIG TEST

Tennessee Faces Partisan School Board Elections

BY MARTA W. ALDRICH, CHALKBEAT TENNESSEE

Voters all over the state saw school board candidates listed on the ballot with party affiliations for the first time ever in the most recent election.

In Williamson County, half of a dozen school board seats were up for grabs in one of the state’s most hotly contested local elections. Four of five incumbents were running for reelection as Republicans. One of the nine challengers is also running as a Republican, and two are running as Democrats.

Then there’s Nancy Garrett, a lifelong resident who has been a board member since 2016 and served as chair the last two years. Local leaders urged her to identify herself as a Republican on the ballot in her mostly Republican district.

But Garrett, who has voted in every GOP primary since 2014, couldn’t bring herself to run as either a Republican or a Democrat.

“We expect our teachers to be nonpartisan in the classroom,” said Garrett, who’s running as an independent against Republican Drason Beasley. “How can I set a different standard for myself? And how can I put students first if I’m also thinking about partisan politics?”

“I cannot twist myself like a pretzel,” she said.

Not everyone’s on board with the idea, but partisan school board elections are now here in Tennessee, drawing local races under the influence of the national political divide and providing a new source of fuel for the combustive debates over education.

A state law passed last fall gives local political parties more power to choose candidates for races that used to be nonpartisan. In over half of Tennessee counties, a partisan primary selected candidates to run in the coming school board elections on Aug. 4.

“It’s a changed environment,” said Debbie Gould, president of the League of Women Voters of Tennessee, a nonpartisan organization that opposed the change.

“We appreciated nonpartisan elections because it helped the public focus on candidates’ positions instead of their party labels,” said Gould, noting that some partisan candidates have declined to participate in her organization’s forums this summer. “We’re also concerned that voters may not work as hard now to learn about those positions.”

Tennessee’s partisan pivot, and the outcomes of races like Garrett’s, are being closely watched in states like Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and Missouri, where similar partisan school board bills stalled but could be reintroduced in a nation riven by party politics.

“The pandemic, and school reopenings in particular, punched the chest of national politics, and education has moved quickly from being local to national to partisan,” said Jonathan E. Collins, assistant professor of education and international and public affairs at Brown University, who is writing a book about the politics of school boards.

“All eyes are on Tennessee to see if this is a viable political strategy,” he said of the upcoming elections. “If there’s a surge in campaign donations, voter turnout, and partisan representation on school boards, it will signal to other Republican-leaning states to pass similar legislation. But if it backfires and we see a countermobilization, it could serve as a flare for other states to stay away.”

Since the early 1900s, the vast majority of the nation’s 13,000 local school boards have been elected without using political party labels.

The reasoning was that the critical but often mundane work of elected school officials — passing budgets, hiring and firing superintendents, setting school policies, approving vendor contracts — should be shielded as much as possible from potential sources of conflict that could distract them from local education issues and their obligation to students.

But the shock of the pandemic and recent cultural battles over curriculum and instruction thrust locally elected school leaders into the spotlight, and provided a platform for conservative Republicans to rally more support around divisive education issues such as mask requirements, book bans and the rights of transgender students.

Last year, politicians took note when Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin defeated his Democratic opponent, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, on a promise to give parents more say in their kids’ education. And when sketching its education agenda, the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute urged conservative officials to “strongly consider” pivoting to partisan school board elections.

Republican leaders in Tennessee were among the first to follow that advice. Last fall, the state’s GOP supermajority approved a partisan school board election law during a special legislative session on COVID restrictions. The measure headed to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature before opponents, including organizations representing school boards and superintendents, could mobilize against it.

The law will mean different things for voters depending on where they live and whether they elect board members at large or by district. In most cases, local political parties took the lead in recruiting this year’s candidates for primaries. According to state election officials, 57 of 95

Tennessee counties held at least one school board primary election for at least one political party.

In a few cases, there were no primaries, but local political parties convened caucuses to nominate their candidates.

And in some communities — including Tennessee’s largest district, in Memphis, a Democratic stronghold — local parties rejected partisan school board elections, and nonpartisan races remain the norm.

Not surprisingly, the partisan shift appears more pronounced in communities where school leaders took the most heat from parents in recent years, especially for pandemic-related health and safety policies like masking, and remote vs. in-person learning.

Candidates have opted to use party labels in urban districts in Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga, along with large suburban school systems in Madison, Montgomery, Rutherford and Wilson counties.

“It’s become a very toxic environment,” said Tucker McClendon, outgoing board chair for Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools, where angry parents surrounded the boardroom and banged on windows during one meeting in May 2021. Police eventually called in backup officers to control the crowd as the board rejected a proposal to let students remove their masks for the final days of the school year.

McClendon fears the tone will get even worse under the partisan shift.

“Many people running for the board are on polar opposites of the political spectrum,” he said, “and some don’t actually seem to grasp what a school board does.” The president of the Tennessee School Boards Association agrees.

“The most effective school boards are those that can reach a compromise. If you can’t do that, you get gridlock,” said Keys Fillauer, who has served on the board for Oak Ridge City Schools since 2001.

Collins, the Brown University researcher who grew up attending public schools in Jackson, Tennessee, says he’ll be watching closely to see if partisan-elected school boards will govern differently from nonpartisan boards, especially when it comes to serving students who need the most help.

Many partisan candidates in Tennessee are talking more about history curriculum and mask mandates than about student poverty, learning loss and equity, he noted.

“You’re having these partisan fights over education that cover up some of the more important daily issues that need to be addressed policywise,” he said.

Scott Golden, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, counters that party identification will help voters make more informed decisions.

“During the pandemic, every parent was right to get more involved in education when their kids were learning from home,” he said. “That experience really brought to the kitchen table how decisions made by nonpartisan boards were directly impacting their children and families.”

Golden says party labels will encourage voters to weigh in on school board races instead of leaving boxes blank by names they don’t recognize.

“Partisan races just provide more information about the philosophical beliefs of candidates,” he said.

Golden also believes that all school officials will be more accountable to voters if board members declare their political inclinations up front.

“Schools account for 75 percent to 80 percent of county budgets, and it’s only right that voters and taxpayers should know as much as possible about the school board members who are overseeing that,” he said.

Democrats generally opposed partisan school board races, but their state party still sought to recruit candidates to stay competitive, said Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Hendrell Remus.

“Without a party label or party resources, it’s going to be difficult for independent candidates to win,” Remus said. “And if we don’t engage, there’s also a greater likelihood of misinformation when it comes to things like critical race theory and book banning and other divisive ideas about education being circulated by a fringe element of the Republican Party.”

Still, many candidates are pushing back.

In Oak Ridge, a Republican-leaning town near Knoxville that’s home to several federal nuclear research facilities, all four candidates are running as independents for three at-large seats on the five-member school board.

“The Republican Party tried to recruit people to run as Republicans but weren’t able to,” said Fillauer, the board’s chairman, who is not up for reelection.

“I hope that’s because our candidates are running for the right reason, which is to provide a quality education for all students,” added the retired teacher and coach.

In Murfreesboro, three of the four candidates are running as independents for three at-large seats on the city’s school board. Among them is Amanda Moore, a mom and attorney who is seeking a second term in office.

“I’ve worked hard as a board member for four years and developed a lot of relationships,” Moore said. “I trust the voters of Murfreesboro will look past party labels.”

The sole declared Republican in the race, retired teacher Barbara Long, says embracing a party label was tactical because she’s a political newcomer in a large district.

“In the campaign realm, it’s an identifier,” she said. “It helps people get to know who you are and what you stand for. It’s like saying you’re a Baptist.”

Critics worried early on that the new law would diminish the pool of qualified candidates by attracting more partisan warriors and discouraging some civic-minded parents. There are signs that’s happening.

Knoxvillian Rachel Snyder Miller, a former teacher with a master’s degree in public administration, has long been interested in running for office. She is passionate about education policy issues like equity and diversity and is inspired by an aunt who once served on a school board and her own 3-year-old daughter who will one day attend Knox County Schools.

But the new partisan law and the school board rancor she’s seen play out during the pandemic changed her mind about running this year.

“I don’t know if I can be part of a partisan school board,” said Miller, who also worried that campaigning for both a primary and a general election would be too costly and time-consuming.

McClendon, who will leave his board in Chattanooga in September, worries the partisan shift will drive out good education leaders, whether on boards or at the central office.

“I tried to get good people to run for my seat, and they said they wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole,” McClendon said. “As for superintendents, I don’t think any smart person would want to answer to 11 partisan-elected officials. They’d have to think long and hard about the ramifications to their careers.”

Garrett, the candidate who chose to run as an independent in Williamson County, knew that she was facing a tough political fight without a party label. And the stakes couldn’t be higher, she said.

“If we elect school board members who lead in a partisan way and not a professional way, we’ll lose the trust of our educators and they’ll leave,” said Garrett, whose late father was an award-winning teacher in the district where she now serves on the board.

“It’s a fight,” she said, “over everything this community values about education.”

Garrett lost the race on Aug. 4. All six district seats in Williamson County were filled by Republicans.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@ chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. https://tn.chalkbeat. org/2022/7/12/23204652/tennessee-partisan-school-board-race-law-elections

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Who Won And Lost In Metro’s School Board Race

BY AMANDA HAGGARD

In comparison to the races in Williamson County, Nashville’s first partisan school board election saw Democrats win in every seat.

One incumbent, District 2’s Rachael Anne Elrod, kept her seat, and District 6 incumbent Fran Bush, who ran as an independent, lost her seat. Nashvillians overwhelmingly decided against candidates who ran campaigns based on pandemic responses to masking and virtual learning.

District 2: Rachael Anne Elrod

Democrat and incumbent Rachael Anne Elrod kept her District 2 seat on the school board. Republican Todd Pembroke lost by about 1,400 votes.

Elrod was originally elected to the School Board in 2018, and serves as the board’s vice-chair. She studied Education at Austin Peay State University and has worked both as a teacher and a consultant. Elrod has two young children. During the campaign, she has highlighted efforts to both increase pay for teachers, and to integrate social-emotional learning (SEL) into schools.

Elrod has also outlined a number of priorities for improving schools, including expanded access to high quality pre-k, increasing classroom resources, and supporting a student-focused curriculum that takes into account the needs of the whole child.

Pemrboke, who ran his campaign as “No Woke Todd Pembroke,” was originally from Florida, but has lived in Nashville since 2003. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida where he studied finance. Since 2010, he has run an insurance company in Brentwood. He is also a member of the U.S. Army National Guard.

District 4: Dr. Berthena Nabaa-McKinney

Democrat Dr. Berthena Nabaa-McKinney won the race for District 4 by almost 2,000 votes over Kelli Phillips, who ran as a Republican.

Nabaa-McKinney previously served on the school board in 2020 after the passing of school longtime board member Anna Shephard. Nabaa-Mckinney’s focus is “ensuring that all schools in District 4, and across MNPS, will have the equitable funding they need to provide a high-quality education for all students.”

Nabaa-McKinney moved to Nashville in 1997 after growing up in Indiana. She obtained her doctorate in Educational Leadership & Professional Practice from Trevecca Nazarene University. Dr. Nabaa-Mckinney was formerly a MNPS chemistry teacher, as well as a private school principal. She is a parent of five MNPS graduates and a 3rd-grade student in a District 4 school.

Phillips decided to run as a response to COVID-19 related changes in schools, and advocated for ending masking policies during the pandemic.

District 6: Cheryl Mayes

District 6’s Fran Bush, who ran as an independent, lost to Cheryl Mayes, who ran as a Democrat. Mayes, a former board member, beat Bush by more than double the amount of votes.

Mayes has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Tennessee State University and is the founder of My Toolbox Consulting, a leadership development and training consulting firm. Mayes works as the Director of Community Relations with the Multicultural Business Synergy Team at Nissan North America and also as District Director in the office of Congressman Jim Cooper.

Mayes was previously elected to the Board of Education for MNPS and served as chair for her final two years on the board.

Bush had been on the school board since 2018, and is a native Nashvillian with five children who have all attended the MNPS schools. During the pandemic, Bush advocated for in-person learning where masks are optional, and for school choice. She often voted against mask mandates in schools against the advice of health professionals.

District 8: Erin O'Hara Block

Erin O’Hara Block handily won out over Independent Amy Pate in District 8, also by more than double the amount of votes Pate brought in.

O’Hara Block has a master’s degree in Public Policy from Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and a bachelor’s degree in American government and African/African American studies from the University of Virginia.

For over 20 years, O’Hara Block has worked in education policy and research on issues including early learning, afterschool programs, college access, educator preparation, and school leadership. She is currently the Executive Director of the Tennessee Education Research Alliance, a partnership between Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Department of Education. O’Hara Block wants to help create integrated systems to support the mental health of students and educators, both inside and outside of school. She wants to ensure the district provides the resources to recruit and retain high quality staff, and use her expertise to shape education policy and research in Nashville and across the state.

Pate graduated from John Overton High School and is a native Nashvillian — her campaign focused on her disappointment in the experience she and some parents had during schools reopening after the pandemic