ST PAUL, Minn. — In an odd-numbered year like 2023, there aren't many statewide or national elections happening. Still, 49 of Minnesota's approximately 331 public school districts have school board elections this November.
According to the Minnesota School Boards Association, nearly 200 candidates are running for more than 100 open school board seats statewide. While some are holding special elections to fill just one seat, others have multiple candidates vying to fill several seats.
At the state capitol Thursday, advocacy groups including Jewish Community Action, OutFront Minnesota, Gender Justice and others held a press conference to urge Minnesotans to vote in their local school board races.
"School boards set policy. They approve curriculum. They hire and fire staff," said Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, the state's largest teachers union.
A growing number of the candidates have sprouted from heated school board debates on LGBTQ+ issues, book bans, critical race theory and other topics involving historically marginalized communities. Specht urged voters to research all candidates in these five-and-a-half weeks left before Election Day.
"It's easy to dismiss this movement as a Florida thing, as an Oklahoma thing, as a Texas thing but that would be a mistake because it is here," she said. "In the Bloomington Public Schools, there are more than 50 challenges to 30 titles in the school libraries already this year."
"We know that in Minnesota, inclusion is not only the law, it is the right thing to do," added Christy Hall, a senior staff attorney with Gender Justice.
MSBA Executive Director Kirk Schneidawind says the nearly 200 candidates running this fall are part of a rising trend.
"We are seeing more and more of our districts who have not just the bare minimum but multiple candidates for school board seats," he said.
Schneidawind says such districts include Duluth, Hastings, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, and South Washington Co. Schools, among others. South Washington Co. Schools, for example, has a dozen candidates competing for four seats.
Schneidawind says financial interest has also grown.
"In general, we have seen over the last couple of years greater campaign contributions for our school board seats," he said. "As a result, people are spending more money whether it's ads, print ads, TV ads."
He says candidates spending more than $750 on a campaign are required to disclose that information and then school districts publish it on their websites. However, final campaign spending reports won't be ready until after the election.
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