this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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how else are you suppose to select school board members?
In a sane world, by ability and competence
As defined by our able and competent political leaders? Ha ha ha.
How do you assess that exactly? What are the qualifications or objective measurements of competence as a school board member?
And furthermore, according to whom? your personal assessment in particular?
There isn't a single right answer to that and I'm not going to suggest there is.
How any organisation operates, be that public or private, is down to the culture of the organisation, and culture comes from people, process, motivation, legislation, and a whole bunch of factors.
If an organisation has a clear mission, is held organisationally accountable in appropriate ways to that mission and makes people feel professionally enriched and valuable, it will attract competent people. And importantly, an organisation full of competent and principled individuals will attract other competent individuals.
On the flip side, if an organisation is subject to decades of mismanagement, has very poor oversight, doesn't reward people for being good at their jobs and in fact rewards the wrong behaviours then exactly the opposite will happen. People who are competent at what they do will either leave or be crushed down, while those who know how to play the bootlicking game will be raised up, and this type of organisation again becomes self-perpetuating.
None of this happens overnight, in either direction. Failure can take years or decades, and so can the reverse.
The issue is that it's self-referential. The org itself gets to define what is good management or bad. Outsides parties, have no say.
And that's how local school boars work. They are local politics and they have very little external oversight, if any at all. Sort of criminal acts, like a board member embezzling school funds, that violate state law, there isn't really much criteria over which they can be held accountable, other than winning votes from their local voters.
I live in Boston. I can harp all I want about a local school board in TN, but the only power I have is over my own local school board here, where I can vote. And man the candidates we have... are usually a mix of nutbags and slightly less nutbags. School board elections tend to attract weirdos more than sensible people, IME.
Better that people vote for metrics than candidates I would suggest, and measure against those. If we gotta vote for questions too, so be it.
By merit??
who judges that merit? how is it defined?
I hear schools are pretty good at giving people these funny things called "tests" to assess an individual's knowledge on a certain subject. Not only are schools good at testing, I hear there is a WHOLE INDUSTRY built on creating and running them.
You know, they could give those to other people too I'll bet! In fact, I'll bet you can use them to qualify doctors, lawyers, barbers, auto mechanics and all sorts of people!
Oh wait, these are politicians. We shouldn't do that to them. I don't know why, but it just feels wrong. Never mind.
Absolutely! It's just a complete coincidence that the people who the school system is failing are barred from fixing it because in order to pass the test you have to have done well in school. It makes perfect sense.
It's not like the US has a history of refusing to educate people, and then refusing to let them participate in civic matters by gating that access behind tests. The US certainly has never, say, made passing a test a requirement to vote to disenfranchise people.
And we all know that, of course, that any test would be super effective at preventing the abuse the above article is about. You just put the question "are you sexually attracted to children," on the test. That way you'd keep out creeps. And no one would ever lie on a test. That'd be ridiculous.
I don't know why people are disagreeing. It's a perfect system!
How about a polygraph test/examination. I understand they are known to be inaccurate sometimes. I doubt someone could suppress their deeply held lifelong urges enough to fool one with a question about their sexual desires.
Setting aside the fact that polygraphs are pseudoscience mumbo jumbo that don't work in any meaningful capacity, and the results of which are really just the vibes of the person running it (with all of their bigotry/biases on full display.)
The bigger issue is that there are over thirteen thousand school districts in the US. If each school board is four people on average, that's over fifty thousand people you'd have to do polygraphs for. And that's if all you wanted to do was school boards.
Trying to get all of those people polygraphs would be an absolute logistical nightmare. There aren't that many polygraphers out there.
And we shouldn't be legitimizing polygraphs anyway. They have time and time again been shown to be absolute bunk, and to discriminate against people with issues like anxiety (or really, anyone who gets agitated when you accuse them of something). The only people who can reliably pass polygraphs are sociopaths, which feels like the opposite of what you want to be selecting for here.
Who comes up with what's in these tests? Should we elect someone for that job?
Shhhh, don't overload them with reason, it's rare to see this kind of naivete in it's natural form.
edit: some salty salty lurkers around today, come on in, the waters fine, i'm sure you have coherent arguments to add.
Oh come on, but it's fun!
Yes, but you have to go slowly or it'll overwhelm them.
Just to be clear, you're arguing that merit/competence can't be accurately judged and therefore should be ignored in favour of popularity ?
it can't be judged without well-defined criteria, no.
seriously, what is the qualification or criteria for being a good school board member? tell me. I'd like to know.
because as far as I am aware, there absolutely is none. anyone can run for school board.
You should ask people in a professional setting that work with schools this instead of demanding the answers from the black box of the internet.
That's not even required (though it would most likely be more accurate ) , there are some easy , low-hanging fruit answers to this question that don't need expertise.
I'm just interested in seeing if they really think popularity is the best option here.
Dude, I am gonna ask that you look at your actions here cause... Let's be honest the frog is not a reasonable person.
Do you expect to find a nuanced new way to handle elections of the school board?
Or perhaps, do you honestly expect this troll to say something that changes the whole context of this conversation or make you feel that they have changed in some dramatic way?
I say if you look at it, you are legitimizing a pointless conversation where they weaponize apathy and make it look valuable by comparison to complex issues on a topic you aren't knowledgeable enough in to argue against, "no u!"
They never expected an authority figure on it and wouldnt accept one either. They just want your rage and your attention. They aren't fun enough to play with for you to give either.
meh, i was hoping it might be a bit more fun later on but it's been lacklustre so far.
You can't reason someone out of a position they've not reasoned themselves in to but it's sometimes interesting to see if they genuinely believe the positions they tout and hear how they got there.
There are easily understood ways of measuring fitness for a position, an easy answer to the actual question of how evaluations could be possible is to use the criteria for what would be considered a successful run as a school board member, historically and ideally.
Use those criteria to evaluate who has a track record of achieving these things, or the potential/skills to go on to achieve these things during the allotted time.
Does this happen? rarely. Could it potentially work, absolutely.
Personal likeability/popularity is probably a part of those criteria (as with any position involving any politics) but it's not the only one.
Not at all, there's nothing to indicate any kind of space for an adjustment in their view, if they even have an actual perspective beyond trolling.
I'm not sure random internet replies legitimise clear bad-faith troll takes.
As i said, my point here wasn't really to change minds it was more interest in the mindset and reasoning skills of someone who'd post something like that, think of it as internet anthropology.
I don't really have any rage, it's like being angry at a chihuahua for barking.
I'm not expecting good-faith or well reasoned arguments, so I’m not disappointed or angry when they don't appear.
So you waste your time for the sake of it? I'd say something about not being able to reason someone out of a position they didnt use reason to get into in the first place but I guess its repetitive.
You can spend your time as you want but the trolls do build their world by the responses of others. It makes them more real and let's useless conversation bog down better ones. They are seeking answers they know they won't get to make it seem like their world is more figured out for waving away other thoughts.
I dont know. I dont get any joy out of arguing the minutia of nonsense. It feels like it just fills my own head with it and doesnt make me more empathetic to understand that. Personally I am upset to find that someone doesnt want to talk but use me as a springboard for their own stuff but oh well.
Glad you are ok with it I guess.
I stated exactly what my reasons are for engaging,
I think the word you are looking for is recursive, i could be wrong though.
Genuine question, why would i care how they build their world ?
If they want to build a mental echochamber, who am i to deny them their delusions ?
The argument about bogging up otherwise useful conversations has merit though, I’ll consider that going forward.
Though, my side of the argument is still written as a good faith reply so there might be benefit in seeing actual replies, if only from one side...hmm..i'll think on this.
It's not really joy and i'm not really arguing the minutia expecting coherent replies, as i said it's interesting to me to try and understand different kinds of people, it helps me better communicate in situations where the other party is conversing in good faith.
I'm not really looking to build empathy for that either, perhaps some pity in some really tragic cases where you can see they are truly struggling, but those aren't usually trolls, just people struggling with people things.
A lot of the time the useful bits aren't in the bad faith nonsense itself but how it's structured, the way in which the "logical" pivots occur, the word choice or something else that isn't the actual content itself.
I get that it might not be like that for everyone.
I think we might have fundamentally different perspectives on what a conversation can be, but in this case I wasn't expecting genuine engagement, so I’m not upset or disappointed to find out there wasn't any.
I'm also not worried about them being upset by my approach, because bad-faith trolls deserve no worry.
I think to a degree you can see our different styles in just our replies itself, I do care about conversation. I like it and think it's best when it shares information or opinion about people who care to do so. I also dont think to think I can control it but add my opinion so it is seen and move on when it is obviously not productive.
Practical but aware that I am not infinite. Or maybe I am just more tired than other people.
And I dunno I care about others. I think frustrated yipping at each other isn't fun empatheticly but I could be wrong about it. If you find interest in this conversation I am not meaning to stop you just wanted to know you were not stuck in that recursive loop (that was the word, thank you) against your own better judgement.
I can see the difference in style but i think it's also a difference in perspective. For me, most interactions have useful information in them, even the ones like we've been talking about. There is a range of information that you can only get (or is more prevalent in) interactions that aren't a standard sharing of ideas or opinions, for me at least.
As i said, i do understand this is not the same for everyone.
I will admit that my empathy seems to be non-standard, it's not like i don't have any but the situations in which it applies seem to differ from what i hear from others.
When i said fun in that initial reply, what i really mean was interest, in a sense that new information/perspectives are enjoyable because of the influx of new information.
Having to work through and around the yipping from one side is sometimes a requirement to get to the interesting bits, it's not fun, but it is what it is.
i appreciate the heads up though, i'm not immune to getting sucked past the point of interest sometimes.
So your general point is a concern. Who can you trust to make the judgement. But that doesn't mean you should just toss up your hands either. As was pointed out, tests of various sorts could be done and the results presented to the voters so that they have more to go on than the number of lawn signd they have seen for a person. The write ups in the guides are nearly pointless. They can say anything they want in there. For a person running for reelection, their voting record would be nice to give voters easy access to. There are lots of ways to present the voters with objective information so that they can choose based on thier preferences. But none of that happens today.