How school boards became one of democracy’s front lines – By Lexi Lonas (The Hill) / Nov 26, 2023
Since the pandemic, Americans are paying closer attention to school boards and their meetings than ever before, but the rubber-meets-the-road government bodies — an original colonial creation — are no strangers to controversy.
Nick Melvoin got elected to Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education in 2017 and has not seen a break in the chaos since. He has dealt with every school board controversy in the book: natural disasters, teacher strikes, Russian cyberattacks and, of course, COVID-19.
“It’s not surprising to me that we’re having these fights in our schools. It’s unfortunate. I think it’s turned a lot of people off from getting involved in the school board because people took an unnecessary amount of heat” over the past few years, Melvoin said.
School board meetings functioning as political stages is hardly a new idea, though the coronavirus pandemic gave many parents an inside glimpse they never before had into their children’s education.
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