The 2020s have been a tumultuous time for America’s school boards. The decade opened with a pandemic that required board members to make hard decisions about school reopenings and safety protocols—decisions that proved divisive in many parts of the country. Disputes over polarizing issues related to race, gender, and sexuality followed, turning school board meetings into battlegrounds for the nation’s culture wars. Meanwhile, student achievement declined, absenteeism and disengagement increased, and AI-based technologies entered classrooms with little notice but profound implications.

On June 8, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings hosted a webinar that examined the past, present, and future of America’s school boards. This webinar accompanies the release of two new Brookings reports on school boards. The first report analyzes how the COVID and culture-war conflicts affected school boards across the country. The second report presents findings from a nationally representative survey of school board members, documenting board members’ views and experiences and exploring what has changed since the onset of the pandemic.

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