Welcome to Hall Pass, a newsletter written to keep you plugged into the conversations driving school board governance, the politics surrounding it, and education policy.
In today’s edition, you’ll find:
- On the issues: The debate over Bible references in Texas’ elementary curriculum
- School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
- School board members recalled at same rate as last year, highest since 2018
- Extracurricular: education news and numbers from around the web
- Candidate Connection survey
Reply to this email to share reactions or story ideas!
On the issues: The debate over Bible references in Texas’ elementary curriculum
In this section, we curate reporting, analysis, and commentary on the issues school board members deliberate when they set out to offer the best education possible in their district. Missed an issue? Click here to see the previous education debates we’ve covered.
The background
On Nov. 22, 2024, the Texas State Board of Education voted 8-7 to approve the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum for K–5 reading and language arts and K–8 mathematics. Three Republicans joined the board’s four Democrats in voting against the curriculum. The curriculum’s reading and language arts components incorporate biblical references and excerpts.
Adoption of the materials is optional for school districts, but schools that implement Bluebonnet Learning will receive an additional $60 per student from the state starting in the 2025–26 school year.
Today, we’ll look at arguments for and against the curriculum.
The arguments
Caryn Tamber-Rosenau writes that the biblical references in the curriculum reflect what she calls primarily inaccurate Protestant Christian interpretations, rather than a holistic understanding, of the Bible. Tamber-Rosenau says the materials fail to communicate adequate historical, political, and cultural context and argues they promote biblical illiteracy and are misleading.
Bonnie Kristian writes that students benefit from a basic understanding of the Bible and its influence on Western literature, law, and language. Kristian says the curriculum’s biblical references regarding the golden rule, common sayings, and other historical and cultural influences are important for future learning and don’t promote specific religious beliefs.
Read on
As a Jewish biblical scholar in Houston, I’m enraged that Texas is adopting this biblically illiterate new curriculum | Caryn Tamber-Rosenau, Forward
“I believe that learning about the content of the Bible is important for understanding not only religion, but also world history, politics, art and literature. But not like this. The Bluebonnet curriculum about to become part of classroom instruction in some Texas public schools is a travesty. … The creators of the curriculum have defended its biblical content on the grounds that the Bible is a foundational document of our civilization, so students must understand it to be well-educated citizens. But if an understanding of the Bible — and not indoctrination with a Protestant Christian view of the Bible — is the main goal here, then why does the curriculum show so many signs of biblical illiteracy? … If students are taught in kindergarten that King Solomon built a Temple that functioned much like a contemporary Protestant church, or in second grade that Queen Esther was a nonviolent activist for religious freedom, they do not have to do any hard work to understand the Hebrew Bible in its ancient context, not to mention its contemporary Jewish context. The Bluebonnet curriculum takes a rich collection of texts that are sacred for multiple religions and reads them in ways that are inaccurate, misleading and offensive — and that will produce biblically illiterate Texans.”
You don’t need to panic about Bibles in public schools | Bonnie Kristian, MSNBC
“[A]s an educational objective, giving students basic familiarity with the Bible is eminently defensible. Its long historical influence on the literature, law and language of the Western and the Western-colonized world (which is to say, almost all of the world) is undeniable, and students should be able to recognize that influence when they encounter it. … Schools that leave their students ignorant of the single most important influence on the English language are doing a disservice to the next generation of thinkers, readers and writers of every religion and none at all. That’s certainly true at the level of high school literature, but I think there’s a reasonable — if debatable — case for starting younger. Elementary schoolers are old enough to learn about (and practice) the golden rule. They can benefit from understanding biblically inspired idioms like “richer than Solomon,” “my cup runneth over” or “the patience of Job.” They’ll be better prepared to learn history like the Scopes Monkey Trial if they already understand the gist of that era’s debate over the origin of life. That’s not exactly the stuff of a big tent revival, and the mere presence of Bibles in public schools does not portend the end of the rightful separation of church and state. If this Texas reading curriculum is what reverses dechurching in America, it will only be through divine intervention.”
School board update: filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
In 2025, Ballotpedia will cover elections for more than 30,000 school board seats. We’re expanding our coverage each year with our eye on covering the country’s more than 80,000 school board seats.
Election results from the past week
South Carolina
Ballotpedia covered a special general election for an at-large seat on the McCormick County School District school board on Jan. 14. Shay Blair-Franklin, Mark Koeppen, Talisa Thomas, and Latoya Wilkerson ran in the election. Results for the special election were not yet available at the time of publication of this newsletter.
McCormick County Schools enrolls approximately 600 students. McCormick County is located north of Augusta, Georgia.
Upcoming school board elections
Oklahoma
This year, Ballotpedia will provide comprehensive coverage of the Sooner State’s school board elections, including in Tulsa Public Schools, Oklahoma City Public Schools, and Edmond Public Schools—the state’s three largest districts by student enrollment.
Primaries are scheduled for Feb. 11, while general elections are scheduled for April 1.
In Oklahoma, elections are canceled if only one candidate files to run for a seat. If two candidates file, the primary is canceled and both advance to a general election. If more than two candidates file, a candidate can win the primary outright with more than 50% of the vote. When that doesn’t happen, the two top vote-getters advance to the general.
In 2023, Oklahoma held elections for 556 school board seats. Although Oklahoma’s school board elections are nonpartisan, Ballotpedia used publicly-available voter files and candidate filing information to identify candidate partisan affiliations, finding that:
- Registered Democrats won 24%
- Registered Republicans won 72%
- Registered independents or a minor party candidates won 4%
Ballotpedia also found that 92% of incumbents who ran for re-election won, but 82% ran unopposed. Of the 80 incumbents who faced opposition, 47% lost.
Click here to read our full 2023 analysis of Oklahoma’s school board elections.
Wisconsin
Ballotpedia will cover primary elections for seven school districts in Wisconsin, including the state’s two largest school districts, on Feb. 18. These elections will occur in DeForest Area School District, Madison Metropolitan School District, McFarland School District, Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, Milwaukee Public Schools, Sun Prairie Area School District, and Verona Area School District. The general elections for these districts are scheduled for April 1.
School board members recalled at same rate as last year, highest since 2018
Ballotpedia recently released our annual report on recall campaigns where we covered 40 recall efforts against 82 school board officials. This is less than in 2023 and 2022, when we covered 48 recall efforts against 97 officials, and 54 efforts against 123 officials, respectively.
Voters removed 11 of the 82 officials — a 13.4% recall success rate, the same rate as 2023 when voters removed 13 of 97 targeted officials, and the highest since 2018, when voters removed 29.7% of school board officials named in petitions.
Thirty-nine states allow voters to recall local officials. Nineteen of those states also have recalls for state officials. Eleven states do not allow voters to recall any elected officeholders. Some states require sufficient reason to hold a recall election, which can include abuse of power, malfeasance, or failure to perform prescribed duties. Other states do not require any grounds for recall.
In 2024, city council members faced more recall efforts than any other group. City council members have faced the most recall efforts in every year since 2016, except for 2021 when efforts to recall school board members outpaced any other group as the country confronted the coronavirus pandemic. School board members faced the second most recall efforts in every year between 2016-2024 except 2021, when they faced the most, and 2017 when mayors and city council members both faced more.
Recall efforts against school board members took place in 14 states last year. California and Michigan had the most recall campaigns, with 12 and 9, respectively. In 2023 and 2022, these same two states led the count. Both states had 14 recall efforts in 2023.
Here are a few notable school board recall efforts from 2024:
Juneau Borough School District recall
Recall elections against two of the seven members of the Juneau Borough School District school board in Alaska were held on Oct. 1, 2024. Emil Mackey and Deedie Sorensen retained their seats on the board after a majority of voters cast ballots against the recall effort.
Recall supporters included the following reason for the recall on petitions: “failure to understand the FY24 budget and accounting errors resulting in $7.9M deficit and taxpayer loan from CBJ.” Supporters initially submitted six other reasons for recall, but the Juneau City Attorney rejected them as not legally valid. One rejected reason was “rushing to adopt a polarizing consolidation model while refusing to factor in significant negative community impacts.” The board approved a plan to convert the district’s Thunder Mountain High School into a middle school and send all high school students to Juneau-Douglas High School.
The school district discovered a $9.5 million budget shortfall in December 2023. Earlier that year, the school board had unanimously approved the district’s budget through June 30, 2024. After the board became aware of the budget shortfall, they approved a new, modified budget, which included a $4 million interest-free loan from the city of Juneau.
Jenny Thomas, one of the 11 individuals who made up the recall committee, said the board should have detected the budget issues before it became a crisis. She said the recall effort was meant “to hold them accountable for their prior actions and how they’ve handled this whole thing.”
Both board members said they voted to approve a budget in spring 2023 that appeared to be balanced based on information the district’s administration and financial staff provided. In response to the recall effort, Sorensen said she felt attacked. “I don’t feel like this is really about the FY24 budget. I feel like particularly the names (of sponsors) that are on that petition are all about being opposed to the consolidation of the high schools,” Sorensen said.
“The people that are pursuing this are people in pain and people in shock,” Mackey said. “And their anger and being in this situation is justified. I just disagree with them going after the people who have been trying to avoid this for the last three years.”
More than 10,000 votes were cast in the recall election. Mackey defeated his recall 63.3% to 36.7%, and Sorensen defeated hers with 65.2% to 34.8%.
Temecula Valley Unified School District recall
Voters recalled Joseph Komrosky, the Trustee Area 4 representative on the Temecula Valley Unified School District Board of Education in California, by a vote of 51.1% to 48.9% on June 4, 2024. However, at the November general election, where four of the board’s five seats were up for election, Komrosky won election and re-joined the school board just months after the successful recall campaign.
The effort to recall Komrosky and two other members of the board began in June 2023. The original notices of intent to recall also named Trustee Area 2 representative Danny Gonzalez and Trustee Area 3 representative Jennifer Wiersma. Recall supporters did not collect enough signatures to put a recall of Gonzalez and Wiersma on the ballot.
The effort started after the board voted a board meeting on May 16, 2023 3-2 against a new social studies curriculum published by the Teachers Curriculum Institute (TCI). The social studies curriculum was for first through fifth grades and was scheduled to be used for eight years starting in the 2023-2024 school year.[7] California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced on July 13, 2023, that the state would provide the school district with social studies books to replace the ones that the board cancelled by their vote against the curriculum.
The board reviewed the textbooks again on July 18, 2023, and again voted 3-2 to reject them. After the second vote, Newsom announced that the district would be fined $1.5 million and charged an additional $1.6 million to pay for the state to ship the district new textbooks. On July 21, 2023, the board voted 4-0 to approve the new curriculum. Wiersma and Komrosky voted with the other members of the board to approve the curriculum, while Gonzalez was absent.
When voting against the social studies curriculum, Komrosky said he did not agree with the mentions of Harvey Milk in the textbook’s optional supporting materials and called Milk a pedophile in reference to a report that Milk had a relationship with a 16-year-old when he was 33. In response to Newsom’s announcement of the fine against the district, Komrosky said the school district still had time to meet state and federal mandates for the 2023-2024 school year, saying: “We do not appreciate Governor Newsom’s effort to usurp local control and all that will apparently result from these tactics is a waste of the taxpayers’ money.”
The One Temecula Valley Political Action Committee initiated the recall process. On its website, the PAC said, “We understand that the chaos created by these board members has caused concern and frustration within our community. Therefore, we are taking action to ensure that our schools can move forward in a positive direction.”
The Temecula Valley Educators Association (TVEA) voted to support the recall effort. Several other local advocacy groups also supported the campaign, including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Inland Empire chapter, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Southwest Riverside branch 1034.
At the November election, Komrosky won election to rejoin the board by 227 votes, defeating TVEA-endorsed candidate David Sola. A conservative block retook control of the board as a result of the election. The Riverside County Republican Party endorsed two other candidates, in addition to Komrosky, — Melinda Anderson and Emil Roger Barham — who won election to the five-member board.
Extracurricular: education news from around the web
This section contains links to recent education-related articles from around the internet. If you know of a story we should be reading, reply to this email to share it with us!
Take our Candidate Connection survey to reach voters in your district
Today, we’re looking at survey responses from two Oklahoma school board candidates running in Feb. 11 primaries. General elections are scheduled for April 1.
Kate Williams is running to represent Zone 5 on the Broken Arrow Public Schools Board of Education. Incumbent Jerry Denton and Bruce Lamont are also running in the election.
Broken Arrow Public Schools is the fifth-largest district in the state, with approximately 20,000 students.
Incumbent Calvin Moniz is running for re-election on the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education. Moniz was first elected in a 2024 special general election. Khadija Goz is also running in the election.
Tulsa Public Schools is the largest district in the state, with around 34,000 students.
Here’s how Williams answered the question, “What is the primary job of a school board member in your view?”
“First and foremost, school board members are advocates for students and their ability to learn most effectively. School board members are also the voice of the teachers, students, parents, and taxpayers living in their zones. They need to be open to hearing from those constituents and bringing their concerns and questions to the larger governing body, including the state legislature.”
Click here to read the rest of Williams’ responses.
Here’s how Moniz answered the question, “What is the primary job of a school board member in your view?”
“Calvin Michael Moniz views the role of a school board member as a critical position of leadership and stewardship in shaping the future of public education. He believes a school board member serves as a bridge between the community and the school district, ensuring that the voices of students, parents, teachers, and stakeholders are heard and represented in decision-making.
Moniz sees the role as one that requires both vision and accountability. School board members must set clear goals for academic excellence, equitable access to resources, and student success, while also ensuring fiscal responsibility and transparency in the use of public funds. They must work collaboratively with the superintendent and district leaders to develop and implement policies that create a positive and supportive environment for learning.
For Moniz, a school board member is not just a policymaker but an advocate for students, a partner to educators, and a champion for public education. He is committed to fostering a culture of trust, engagement, and excellence to ensure that every student has the opportunity to succeed.”
Click here to read the rest of Moniz’s responses.
Everyone deserves to know their candidates. However, we know it can be hard for voters to find information about their candidates, especially for local offices such as school boards. That’s why we created Candidate Connection—a survey designed to help candidates tell voters about their campaigns, their issues, and so much more.
In the 2024 election cycle, 6,539 candidates completed the survey, including more than 500 school board candidates.
If you’re a school board candidate or incumbent, click here to take the survey.
The survey contains over 30 questions, and you can choose the ones you feel will best represent your views to voters. If you complete the survey, a box with your answers will appear in your Ballotpedia profile. Your responses will also appear in our sample ballot.
And if you’re not running for school board, but there is an election in your community this year, share the link with the candidates and urge them to take the survey!
This post was originally published on here
