Over the next seven days, Oregon voters will decide who they want to lead their local school districts.

School boards make key decisions that impact 197 districts and more than half a million students across the state. Parents, school staff and taxpayers all have a stake in these elections, if nothing else, because our tax money pays for public education.

Oregon school board positions are unpaid and voluntary. Members serve four-year terms and are elected every odd-numbered year to these nonpartisan boards. And at the end of the day, they set the North Star for districts.

But deciding who’s best to step into these roles can be tricky.

Vince Adams is a board development specialist with the Oregon School Boards Association. He’s seen every angle of school board elections over the years, having served on the Corvallis School Board for a decade before taking on the statewide role. Now, he’s one of four trainers at the state association who help train school board members across Oregon.

OPB spoke with Adams to get some advice on navigating school board elections today.

Tip #1: Understand the role of the school board

First, it is critical to understand what school boards do — and what they don’t.

Broadly speaking, school boards are responsible for three key things: They hire and evaluate a superintendent, adopt an annual budget and set big-picture goals for the school district with their priorities and policy decisions.

Adams said the evaluation component is critical — it isn’t just about hiring and firing the district leader. It’s about building a relationship.

“You’re entering into a contract with a person who’s professionally trained to be a chief executive,” he said. “A school board without a superintendent is just a group of people who are frustrated because they can’t do anything.”

While daily operations fall under the superintendent’s purview, Adams said the school board does need to be looking on the horizon of K-12 education years out to steer their district in the right direction.

“What are those things that we’ve got to get done for our kids that are going to make the difference and create the improvements that we want to see?” he said.

As far as the budget goes, Adams stressed that boards are largely beholden to the Oregon legislature for funding. There’s little local control, with the exception of things like bond measures and local tax levies.

District leaders are in the thick of budget season right now, with many districts, including Portland Public Schools, facing tens of millions of dollars in cuts for next year.

Where the school board has the most say is in setting priorities on how that money is spent. Adams described it as more of an alignment check in the budget process — does the spending align with the board’s top priorities?

And when it comes to setting policy, that’s where Adams said families, students and educators may see the most impact.

School boards meet only once or twice a month on a regular basis. In between, policies passed by the board serve as a “message in a bottle” to the superintendent and district staff on what the board expects. These are constant and consequential, and, as Adams put it, can fundamentally change how schools serve kids.

“We’ve seen all over the state where there’s been transformational policy change for the better and for the worse,” he said.

The big takeaway on what school boards do not do is control day-to-day operations. The board is often privy to things such as lawsuits, personnel issues and curriculum development, but they aren’t making daily decisions or course corrections. That falls to the superintendent and district staff.

This tension can play out when individuals testify at school board meetings, for example, and get frustrated when the members don’t step in to fix a problem.

“The storms are going to come,” Adams said, “and part of the role of the board is to be that buffer, to give the district that safe harbor so they can focus their attention on children.”

Tip #2: Follow the money

School board races, even in just the past decade, have changed dramatically. They’ve become more politically divided (more on that soon), and there’s a lot more money involved.

It’s common for a school board candidate in an urban district, for example, to raise and spend tens of thousands of dollars over the course of their campaign. So it’s important to understand where that money comes from and what it’s being used for.

“Let’s face it: these days, school board candidates, all candidates, are like race cars,” Adams said. “They have all these decals stuck to their sides. … They’re trying to signal their values and raise money because they have to. They have to be so aggressive in their messaging.

“I mean, my goodness, can you get elected without doing a mailer these days?”

Several advocates and even some state lawmakers want to structurally change the way school board races operate. Examples include proposals to set campaign finance limits or change the way board members are elected, such as by zones within a school district rather than at large, often to make these races more accessible to candidates who otherwise might not run.

Capping the amount of money candidates could raise or spend could shift the financial power even further to political action committees, or PACs, Adams said, which are already heavily involved in these races. And changing overall voting structures would look very different in different parts of the state.

“The problem is that we have politics pushing into school board races,” Adams said, “and we have our political parties, you know, lining up and standing up candidates, or at least endorsing and funding them.”

Currently, candidates frequently sign on to be part of an organized slate of candidates running on similarly minded — and similarly political — platforms. Voters will frequently see anti-abortion or pro-labor PACs, for example, investing substantial amounts of money in a group of candidates.

“The reality is that they’re running as a slate because it’s a great way to optimize resources,” Adams said. “We’ve had a lot of money start flowing into these races because they’ve become politicized. This is largely because they’re being driven by these litmus test issues, and that’s the problem.”

Campaign finance data is readily and publicly available on the Oregon Secretary of State’s campaign finance website.

Voters can search by candidate name or year. Once you’ve found the campaign you want to explore, here are some basics to understand the money behind it:

1. There’s an “account summary” in the bottom right corner of a candidate’s committee page. That will show you how much cash, loans and in-kind contributions they’ve received for the year. It will also show the breakdown and total amount they’ve spent, as well as how much money was carried over from previous elections, if applicable.
2. “Campaign finance activity” at the bottom will lead you to a spreadsheet of all activity. Pro tip: Pay close attention to what year the transaction took place and whether it was an expenditure (money going out) or a contribution (money coming in).
3. Sort by the largest contributors or look to see how many out-of-state contributors there are. Click on the individual payee if there’s one that catches your eye.

Tip #3: Keep an eye out for politically charged phrases

“Woke.” “Parental rights.” “Back to the basics.” “Union friendly.”

These are examples of phrases from both sides of the political spectrum that voters might hear from campaign materials or the candidates themselves.

Different voters will perceive each of these phrases differently. But given these are nonpartisan roles, remember that school board members should not feel beholden to party platforms.

Adams’ biggest recommendation: voters should figure out the how, not the what.

“There’s a lot of candidates out there talking about what they want to get done — very positional stances, like, ‘We really need school resource officers.’ That’s a position. That’s a ‘what’ we’re going to do,” he said.

“I’m not as interested in the what. I want to know how you’re going to approach the work. You care about school resource officers and safety in school? Great. How are you going to have that conversation?”

Adams said to remember that a school board candidate, if elected, will only be one voice on the board. They don’t have the authority to promise voters that the full board will do anything specific.

He encouraged voters to also consider whether a candidate’s idea is “a kid problem or an adult problem.”

A lot of times in school board races, Adams explained, candidates talk about issues that concern the parents, rather than the students, such as parents’ anxiety about school safety.

“I’m not saying that the anxiety that parents have isn’t legitimate,” he said, “but we often see adults centering adult problems and adult issues, rather than focusing on the needs of kids and bringing student voice into that.”

Tip #4: Do a little digging

Setting mailers and forum speeches aside for a second, it’s always a good idea to do a little background research on the candidates. And voters can do this in several ways.

An easy place to start is to flip through the candidates’ social media pages and websites, if they have them, and read local news stories on the races. Many newspapers still do editorial endorsements, too.

Then, read the candidates’ statements in the voters’ guide.

Some school board candidates bring a business background. Some are longtime parent-activists. Some have an educational background. Voters can reflect on why that person is coming to the school board, and ask: “What do you see lacking on the current school board, and does this person fill that gap?”

That said, Adams offered an important caveat, saying what’s included in the voters’ pamphlet is typically written early in the campaign, maybe even before the individual has filed.

“Look for core values there,” he suggested, “but the reality is that (with) a candidate, particularly someone who’s new to school board work, the rhetoric will change across the campaign.”

If a candidate is running to maintain an existing role on the school board, look at how they approached and voted on issues during their previous term.

“For most communities in Oregon,” Adams said, “you can just reach out to your school board member and ask them, ‘Hey, what was your position on, you know, the (school resource officer) issue?’ and ‘Take me through your thought process. What were you thinking about there?’ ”

Most Oregon school boards are now required to record and post public meetings. Many started doing this before the 2025 requirement because of remote meetings at the height of COVID-19.

As a result, voters can often find recordings of past meetings and see how candidates participated during their tenure, especially on major issues like adopting the annual budget, evaluating the superintendent, handling union negotiations, discussing academic outcomes or debating policies that caused community tension.

Voters can also search things like the Oregon Government Ethics Commission’s final dispositions logs to see if there were major complaints or investigations against individual school board members.

Tip #5: Understand the broader context

A lot of changes are happening at the state and federal levels right now, leaving many school leaders unsure about the future.

Adams said OSBA has heard from many current school board members who are worried about how federal changes could trickle down and affect local districts.

“We have school board members that are shifting their political stances or changing their messaging, trying to dodge what they feel are going to be reprisals from the federal administration,” he said. “And then there are others that are saying, ‘To hell with them. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.’ ”

No matter what, Adams says this will likely impact Oregon schools since schools rely on a lot of federal funding, particularly for the most vulnerable students, such as students with disabilities.

Tip #6: Ask a lot of questions

With T-minus seven days left before ballots are counted, voters might not have a chance to connect with the candidates in person. However, if you do, it’s key to ask a lot of questions — and the right ones.

First, Adams stressed that voters should make sure the candidates understand their role.

Ask: What is your role as an individual board member, and what’s the role of the school board? What’s the school board’s responsibility with regard to kids?

“If you’re going to get a doctor, you’d want a good, competent doctor who’s thoughtful and careful, right? And so, you look at their reviews. But we don’t really have that for candidates,” Adams said, adding that’s why it’s critical to ask how they will show up in these spaces.

Other questions you can ask include:

• What would success look like in your term?
• What are the specific steps you plan to take to get there?
• How do you plan to navigate political divides in your community and among board members?
• Most school boards, at one time or another, will have to deal with cutting the budget. How would you prioritize what to pay for and what to cut?

And lastly, remember throughout this process that each candidate is just that — one person. If elected, these individuals will be responsible for working together to serve the entire district.

“As a board member, I’m participating in something that’s bigger than myself,” Adams said. “Frankly, if we could do it with just superintendents and get good outcomes, we would do it that way, because it’d be a heck of a lot more efficient.

“But the reality is, we know we get better decisions when we bring a group of people together.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/05/13/six-things-oregonians-should-think-about-as-they-vote-in-local-school-board-races/