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[https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nServing on a School Board, 2019-2023: Strengths and Vulnerabilities  \nof a Democratic Institution  \nKathleen Knight-Abowitz  \nMiami University  \nLocal school governance in the U.S. has evolved in structure and influence over the last century. Today, school governance as an accessible, responsive, and effective democratic institution providing high quality educational outcomes relies on specific political and civic conditions in the broader society that are, at present, deteriorating. This multidisciplinary, descriptive-interpretive interview study centers the perspectives of diverse school board members across a range of Ohio districts regarding how they navigated conditions of political and cultural conflict during the 2019–2023 term. Board members’perspectives reveal strengths of the institution, including the communal stewardship of shared resources and values in raising and educating healthy children. Their experiences of school board service also reveal vulnerabilities of local control governance, including the multiple barriers to board service and functioning in the present political and cultural environment.  \nKeywords: Democracy, governance, local control, policy, politics, politics of education, qualitative research, school boards  \nSchool boards in the United States are a curious, paradoxical institution. Criticized by many stripes of education reformers over the last century and misunderstood by many citizens, school boards have for two centuries provided local leadership to schools and communities (Gamson & Hodge, 2018) . While free public schooling is universally available, to provide accessible and standardized education opportunities to every child within a region, schools are also highly localized, reflecting the diversity of places, cultures, and constituencies that make up public school districts and classrooms. Though a much weaker governing institution than ever before in its history, the school board still represents, in its ideal, a way for local citizens to shape the education of their children.“Board members are the checks and balances who oversee the millions of dollars that the public invests in schools, who ask important questions and voice critical concerns, and who monitor the pulse of what is happening locally so schools can be responsive to all the communities they serve”(Sampson, 2025, p. 3) .  \nThe functioning of school boards for the provision of excellent, equitable public schools does not happen in a vacuum. Local school governance as an accessible, responsive, and effective democratic institution relies on specific political and civic conditions in the broader society. Pandemic turmoil, culture wars, and privatization of public schooling are testing the limits of those conditions for high-functioning local governance of public education (McKeon & Gitomer, 2024; Roegman et al., 2022) . The forms of collaboration, public trust, and productive engagement among diverse  \nconstituencies that make local school governance possible are presently under threat from democratic instability and degeneration (Calhoun et al., 2022) . Democracy is understood here as a “project, not simply a condition,” a work in progress requiring “commitment to extend it into the future”(Calhoun et al., 2022, p. 48) . Elected or appointed school boards, a key part of the American civic fabric, “create important opportunities for mass democratic participation”(Collins, 2023, para 8). They also can be, as we have seen in recent years, chaotic forums that may hinder good governance of public schools. Media coverage of recent challenges to school boards has focused on extreme cases of board chaos (Natan","cbCaiaGBVhw2X56n","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiaGBVhw2X56n","pdf",463778,17,"English","# Serving on a School Board, 2019-2023\n## Strengths and Vulnerabilities of a Democratic Institution\n# The Evolving Story of Local Control and Educational Politics","[{\"question\":\"What period and setting does the study focus on?\",\"answer\":\"The study examines the 2019–2023 term, using interview data from school board members serving in Ohio districts.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the study investigate school boards’ experiences?\",\"answer\":\"It uses a phenomenological, descriptive-interpretive approach based on semi-structured interviews with 18 board members.\"},{\"question\":\"What strengths and vulnerabilities does the study identify?\",\"answer\":\"Board members describe strengths of the institution, including communal stewardship of shared resources and values. They also report vulnerabilities, including multiple barriers to board service and functioning in today’s political and cultural environment.\"}]","Serving on a School Board, 2019-2023 - Strengths and Vulnerabilities of a Democratic Institution | PDF",1792069340,43]