Across the country, there are roughly 13,500 school districts and 83,000 school board members governing those districts.
In 2024 and 2025, Ballotpedia's staff conducted a Virtual School Board Listening Tour to learn more about how school board members see their service, their challenges, their opportunities and their role as a school board member. We interviewed 100 school board members across the country.
Ballotpedia’s Virtual School Board Listening Tour was a qualitative research initiative conducted throughout 2024 and 2025. The goal of the initiative was to develop a deeper understanding of how school board members across the United States view their roles, responsibilities, and challenges.
Ballotpedia launched the project as part of its overall multi-year goal of covering all elections in the United States, including all local elections – and that includes school board elections in the country’s 13,500 public school districts. The idea was to learn more about the people who occupy these uniquely interesting positions of community trust in order to make sure that our coverage of their elections serves their communities well.
During the Listening Tour, dozens of Ballotpedia staffers conducted hour-long in-depth interviews with 100 current and former school board members from a wide range of districts—urban, suburban, and rural; large and small; politically diverse and politically homogeneous. Participants represented 33 states and varied regional and political contexts, in order to capture a broad spectrum of experiences and viewpoints.
While each district is unique, common themes emerged across interviews—particularly in how board members understand their role in shaping student outcomes, managing district resources, and responding to community expectations.
