Of the school board election winners for Ames Community School District and Iowa City Community School District, all seven were not opposed to the teaching of critical race theory. | Pexels/mentatdgt
Of the school board election winners for Ames Community School District and Iowa City Community School District, all seven were not opposed to the teaching of critical race theory. | Pexels/mentatdgt
A study conducted by Ballotpedia identified the winners of November 2021 school board races in 96 school districts across 16 states, with a total of 302 seats, to analyze opinions on certain hot-button issues, including the matter of teaching critical race theory.
The Ballotpedia website is home to about 330,000 pages covering an array of aspects of American politics at the federal, state and local levels. The study identified candidates according to their positions on questions regarding race in eduction, reactions to how schools reacted to the coronavirus (mask mandates and distance-learning options) and sex/gender issues in schools.
Nationwide, 27% of winning school board candidates opposed teaching critical race theory in schools, while 53% did not oppose it and 13% had an unclear stance, according to the data. Results were still pending in the other 7% of seats in the study. The research noted that districts that elected at least one candidate opposed to critical race theory were likely to elect multiple members with that stance.
Two of the districts in the study were Iowa’s Ames Community School District and Iowa City Community School District. Among seven seats total, every successful candidate did not oppose critical race theory.
The research also found that in 2021, 45% of school board seats were open, up from 26% in 2018. That indicates that the number of incumbents deciding against running for re-election increased. And incumbency lost some of the security for a win that it usually carries. Ballotpedia discovered that incumbents lost their races on 33% of occasions, which is nearly double the average loss rate for an incumbent from 2018-2020.
Elsewhere in Iowa, Sarah Barthole won an election to the Ankeny school board, located in suburban Des Moines. She garnered a high-profile endorsement from Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. Barthole collaborated with Reynolds last year to reopen schools and is credited with inspiring the state’s law prohibiting mask mandates in schools, The Associated Press reported.
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