All 15 seats of the State Board of Education are up for grabs in November, and one race in District 7 highlights how critical race theory has become a key issue.
As political races go, candidates for the Texas State Board of Education are often overlooked, making their races a perennial wallflower in Texas politics.
But this year, after a seismic conservative shift erupted in local school board races in suburbs across the state, more eyes are on who will be elected to the board that dictates what should be in teachers’ lesson plans in Texas’ 1,200 public school districts. Parents in some of these districts have become a vocal force coming out of the pandemic, questioning everything from why and when schools should close to what books are appropriate to be in school libraries to how thorough history lessons should be.
“One thing that strikes me is that it mirrors what we’re seeing in local school board elections,” said Rebecca Deen, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.
And thanks to redistricting — the post-U.S. census exercise in which boundaries for State Board of Education districts, along with legislative and congressional districts, are redrawn every decade — all 15 seats on the education board are up for grabs.
While nine incumbents — six Republicans and three Democrats — are seeking reelection, many close observers of these often-ignored races are watching to see if the board moves further to the right or whether incumbents will be able to win back their seats. A total of 33 candidates — 14 Republicans, 11 Democrats, two independents and three Libertarians — are vying for those 15 seats.
Deen said that like local school board elections, state education board races are low turnout, so candidates try to focus on hot-button issues.
“The State Board of Education is not new to social movements,” Deen said. “What has come back again is the intensity of the debate in this education space.”
And if there’s anything to help challengers stand out, it’s a new Texas that went into effect last year and bars teachers from subjecting students to anything that makes them “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” based on their race or sex. The measure was designed to counter what conservatives term “critical race theory” — a broad term used to describe what they see as indoctrination: attempts by a school to offer a more comprehensive look at American history.
In truth, critical race theory is a college-level discipline that examines why racism continues in American law and culture decades after the civil rights movement in the United States. It is not taught in elementary or secondary schools in Texas.
But that hasn’t stopped conservative candidates from keeping an “anti-CRT” plank from their state education board campaign literature.
Two Republican incumbents on the state board lost their primaries to candidates promising to get critical race theory out of classrooms. Jay Johnson lost his primary in District 15, in the Panhandle, and Sue Melton-Malone lost hers in District 14, covering parts of North Texas..
