Local school boards play one of the most important roles in our communities. HB 256 would fundamentally change how these boards function by converting school board elections from nonpartisan to partisan races. While this shift may sound procedural or beneficial, its consequences would be profound. Making school board elections partisan would undermine effective school governance and add unnecessary political conflict to institutions meant to serve all students.
The politicization of education
HB 256, sponsored by Rep. Jason Kyle, would introduce partisan bias into issues that are not along party lines. This bill, aimed at bringing transparency and accountability, would do the opposite. The office of the local school board is non-partisan for a reason. Party labels and primaries reward ideological conformity rather than collaboration and problem-solving. Instead of focusing on improving student achievement, board members would be pressured to align with party platforms and appeal to primary voters.
Schools should unite communities, not divide them along party lines. In the partisan system, it is customary to be loyal to a few delegates. These delegates may be more focused on the bigger picture of their party than on what’s happening in schools. A vacancy would no longer be filled based primarily on qualifications or demonstrated commitment to student success, but on maintaining party balance. Qualified candidates who are independent or affiliated with a different party could be excluded from consideration altogether.
Over time, this structural change could reshape the culture of school boards themselves. Members may feel greater pressure to remain aligned with party expectations, knowing that both their path to office and potential successors are tied to partisan systems. That shift moves school governance further away from broad community representation and closer to a model centered on party continuity and control.
Outside money
Partisan elections would also invite greater influence from party organizations and outside money. When candidates run under party labels, they become targets for organized party support and funding, which can dominate campaigns with expensive advertising and coordinated voter outreach. Nonpartisan school board races are typically low-cost and driven by local concerns, allowing parents and community members to engage directly with candidates.
Under HB 256, political action committees and out-of-district donors would have stronger incentives to intervene. This shift would drown out local voices and move school governance toward those with the most money and political power, rather than those most invested in student success. This would diminish student needs rather than uplift them during school board elections. As a result, decisions could increasingly reflect the priorities of well-funded political actors rather than the needs of students and families, undermining the integrity of school governance.
Lack of transparency
This provision also narrows transparency despite its efforts to be more transparent. Party selection processes are typically governed by internal rules and meetings that may not provide the same level of public visibility as open board interviews. As a result, families and taxpayers could have fewer opportunities to evaluate the individuals seeking to represent their children’s school. HB 256 would change how vacancies on local school boards are filled by requiring that any appointed replacement share the same political party as the departing member.
The bill also “provides for the election of a local school board member using the partisan primary election nomination process,” meaning future candidates would first have to secure a party nomination before appearing on the general election ballot. We currently hold public interviews with potential candidates. This allows the community to be a part of the decision. With this change, the decision moves to the party system. A small number of delegates in the specific party would now decide the vacancy rather than the community.
This approach prioritizes party continuity over community trust. School board members are not legislators advancing a party’s agenda. They are community representatives trusted to guide local public education and make decisions that put students’ needs first. Their role is to ensure schools serve the best interests of families and taxpayers rather than political parties. Treating these positions like partisan offices erodes their purpose.
Public education works best when it brings communities together around shared goals, not when it divides them along party lines. HB 256 offers no clear solution to a real problem, but it introduces significant risks to the governance of local schools. This debate is not about politics in the classroom, but about preserving leadership structures that allow school boards to operate independently of party control. Lawmakers should reject this bill and protect the nonpartisan framework that keeps local school governance accountable to families, not political parties.
BR | Mar 2, 2026 at 4:31 pm
It is naive to think school board elections are not already political or partisan. The only difference is if they are “nonpartisan” it makes it more difficult to learn what they believe before choosing who to vote for.
John Hedberg | Feb 22, 2026 at 3:06 pm
How about requiring that any school board member have a child currently attending that school district? How about an additional requirement that the children of any board member be placed in the lowest-performing teachers’ classes, whatever the relevant grade may be?
How about tying teacher pay to the percentage of that teacher’s students who meet grade-level reading and math levels, with mandatory replacement when less than 80% of those students meet proficiency for 3 successive quarters? Teachers with a high percentage of proficient students would be worth the big performance bonuses. You’d need to hire independent test proctors at the end of each quarter, just to keep everyone honest, but parents want results, period, and everyone would save money downstream when the expense of remedial higher ed classes would no longer be necessary.
Let’s face the reality that public education has become ideological, and parents who don’t want their kids propagandized are simply not willing to pay for public education any longer if they don’t have direct control of the curriculum. That includes the University of Utah, by the way. Ultra-processed foods (ultimately self-destructive) are on their way out. I imagine the same parental incentive applies when it comes to ultra-processed ideologies. 🤔☺️
Max Brunette | Feb 24, 2026 at 1:34 pm
John,
I actually agree with you on the need for a performance-based culture. In fact, Utah is already moving that way with SB 173, which is pushing top-tier teacher pay toward $100k. But tying a kid’s classroom placement to a board member’s job or hitting an arbitrary 80% quota is a legal non-starter. Under the 14th Amendment equal protection and procedural due process standards, using students as leverage or bypassing employment protections would invite immediate federal litigation
The real irony here is that HB 256 (partisan boards) actually kills the accountability you’re looking for. If you look at the top-ranked states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, they thrive on stable, non-partisan governance. Meanwhile, the states that have gone all-in on partisan, ‘ideology-first’ schooling (mostly in the South) are consistently at the bottom of the pile for student proficiency.
If we want the “raw” results you mentioned, we need a board focused on things like the Mississippi Miracle literacy reforms, not a board focused on winning a primary. Partisanship is the ultimate “ultra-processed” ingredient, it looks great on a campaign flyer, but it leaves the actual education behind. We need problem-solvers, not more ways to inject unnecessary politics into our schools.
John Hedberg | Feb 25, 2026 at 6:24 am
Sounds like you’re stipulating that our public education system is currently apolitical.
I’d counter by stating that public education has become a cartel of political rhetoric which TALKS about compassion for marginalized peoples while delivering to their children the most ‘racist’ results on the planet, if you consider how much money is being soaked up by do-nothing, say-anything, “I’ll torpedo your grade if you dare have your own opinion” administrators and supposed educators in public school systems serving the most marginalized students: they call marginalized students bigots and lower their final grade for being honest.
Do you know how many times students on this campus repeatedly have their grades threatened by supposedly “compassionate” Progressives (National Socialists) for offering honest thoughts & opinions about their own disadvantaged neighborhoods, cultures, & families, only to have their GPA’s and their prospects for grad school torpedoed for contradicting the lying political narratives of the very people who are so busy ‘appropriating’ their supposed grievances that they can’t be bothered to deliver results for marginalized families which actually help them lift THEMSELVES? 🤔☺️
And this is college, where the students are old enough to know they’re being deliberately gaslit & have the vigilance to protect themselves. In younger K-12 public schools, kids are being fed self-destructive baseless hate-narratives of all kinds which fit a certain political ideology, but not life, and teachers are telling kids that their parents are the enemy, when parents are the only ones who actually care about delivering good outcomes for these students and their future happiness. In fact, when marginalized people start their own successful schools which don’t adopt the DEI-Marxist ‘Woke privilege’ narratives [references: Success Academy in Harlem, “Waiting For Superman” (2010), and “Charter Schools & Their Enemies”(2020)], this ideological public education cartel does everything in their power to shut down and destroy these extremely successful, effective schools run by marginalized people they claim to have compassion for, since that success undermines the entire cartel power structure, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with ‘Woke privilege’: they call ‘people of color’ racist for delivering top results in their own communities, if that successful genuine compassion threatens the political public education gravy train.
Try talking (off campus) with current & former students here, if you want to begin familiarizing yourself with the real story about ‘compassion’ and how that word is being used to dupe, delude, capture, and destroy marginalized families all over the valley, the country, and beyond by people who defame & destroy anyone who disagrees with lying narratives while simultaneously doing everything in their power to deliver the most ‘racist’ results possible for disadvantaged children. 💛