Partisanship and Professionalization: School Board Decision-Making in the Midst of a Pandemic

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, school board members played a prominent role in deciding reopening plans. Using an original large-scale survey of board members, our goal is to understand how the polarized, political context of pandemic responses shaped the decision-making processes of members as they experienced dramatic increases in workload. We find school board members are much more likely to identify at the extremes of partisan identity, as strong Democrats or strong Republicans. How they identified mattered in who they trusted to tell them information, how much control they felt the board should have in the process of reopening plans, and who should interpret data about COVID. If the other party was in power at the state level, members from opposing parties had less trust in state sources. Most school board elections are nonpartisan, but that does not mean that the members themselves do not strongly identify with a party.