I recently wrote about what I think voters should look for in a School Board member: someone who understands governance, does the homework, asks useful questions, can disagree without shifting every disagreement into a blood sport, and remembers that being elected to a Board does not suddenly make you the superintendent, chief business officer, facilities director, and principal of every school at once.
Another question is worth answering first because School Board races occupy an odd place on our ballots. We give these officials enormous authority over a key public institution but provide voters with little information about the candidates. You may get a candidate statement, a ballot designation, a few mailers, some endorsements, and see a few yard signs. For a position involving budgets, labor agreements, facilities, curriculum, litigation, and superintendent oversight, this hiring packet feels thin.
California research suggests voters have been filling in the gaps for years. In 2022, a PACE/USC Rossier survey of California voters found that 64% said they had voted in their most recent local School Board election. Yet when asked how much they knew about the roles and responsibilities of local School Boards, 43% knew at least some, while 53% said they knew only a little or nothing at all.
Political scientists call races like these low-information elections. California School Board research has found that voters use readily available cues to decide who seems qualified, including a candidate’s occupation and connection to education. When the ballot gives you only a few words about someone, those words suddenly have to perform the duties of a résumé, reference check, and governance philosophy.
The trouble comes when shorthand becomes the entire résumé. Being a parent can provide useful perspective, as can being a teacher, business owner, attorney, retiree, or longtime resident, but none of those labels show whether someone understands the actual job. A yard sign does not explain how its owner views reserves. An endorsement does not tell you if the candidate understands one-time versus ongoing spending. “Parent” does not explain how someone would evaluate a superintendent, and “educator” does not automatically show how that person would oversee an organization-wide budget. Convenient cues are useful to begin with, but considerably less useful when they are where the inquiry ends.
The actual job is much larger than many people realize. The California School Boards Association says governing boards set District direction, employ and evaluate the superintendent, adopt policies and curriculum, establish budget priorities, approve the budget and Local Control and Accountability Plan, oversee facilities, approve collective bargaining agreements, and provide accountability to the public. Individual trustees cannot wield those powers independently; the Board acts collectively.
Understanding the line between governance and administration is one of the most useful things a voter can grasp before evaluating candidates. Board members establish direction, approve policy, authorize spending, and hold the superintendent accountable, while the superintendent and staff manage daily operations. California governance standards caution trustees against performing management functions assigned to staff. This sounds obvious until you watch local government and see how tempting it can become to cross from asking whether a program is working into deciding how it should be run.
Laguna received a fairly dramatic reminder this spring of how much organizational direction an elected majority can move through its actions. On May 12, the Board and Superintendent Jason Glass reached a mutual agreement ending his service effective May 31; two days later, the Board announced Don Austin as the incoming superintendent, and approved his employment agreement in June. Whatever anyone thought of the transition, five elected Board members held the authority to make it happen.
Money provides another reason to read beyond the ballot designation. A California School Board adopts the District budget, monitors fiscal health, approves collective bargaining agreements, and makes decisions that create multiyear obligations. Those votes reach classrooms, programs, staffing, compensation, facilities, and the District’s ability to absorb future costs, which is why “fiscal responsibility” is a lovely phrase on a campaign page but far more useful when paired with some understanding of school finance.
LBUSD is community-funded, with local property taxes providing the large majority of District revenue. Property owners are deeply connected to the school system whether or not anyone in their household currently uses it, which suggests that residents without children should leave school issues to parents hard to square with how the institution is financed.
Economic research gives people without children reasons to look beyond the property-tax bill. Economists Christian Hilber and Christopher Mayer found that school spending reflected in home prices helps explain why homeowners without children support public schools. California research went further: Stephanie Cellini, Fernando Ferreira, and Jesse Rothstein compared districts where school bonds narrowly passed with those where they narrowly failed and found sizable increases in home prices after passage.
More recent national research across 29 states reached a less tidy conclusion: school capital spending increased test scores and home prices on average, although different projects produced different effects. Basic infrastructure such as HVAC boosted academic outcomes without inevitably increasing home values, while athletic facilities increased home values without corresponding test-score gains. Anyone hoping for a bumper-sticker equation in which every school dollar becomes a predictable number on Zillow will have to keep looking. Public facilities are more complicated than that, which gives homeowners reason to care about who ranks those investments.
This November puts it all into one election. Three of LBUSD’s five Board seats are up at once, with three members to be elected on November 3. One election can change the governing majority.
For teachers and other represented staff, that majority will shape collective bargaining, compensation, budgets, District policy, and superintendent oversight. Parents will live with priorities affecting programs, curriculum, student services, facilities, and the direction of their children’s schools. Community members and property owners will help fund the institution while living with the consequences of its contracts, leadership, facilities, and long-term spending. Those interests will not always line up neatly, which is another reason choosing three of five members deserves more consideration than recognizing a name and filling in a bubble.
Voters will also consider Measure A, the LBUSD bond measure that would authorize up to $83 million in general-obligation bonds for school facilities. The measure would replace the existing school bond tax as it expires at an expected rate of approximately $8.85 per $100k of assessed value, with proposed work including aging roofs, plumbing, electrical systems, safety improvements, classrooms, science labs, career-technical facilities, and other campus needs. The measure includes independent audits and citizen oversight.
The Board election and Measure A overlap in practice. Bond authorization establishes the financing framework, while the Board serving afterward would decide project scope, timing, priorities, contracts, and implementation. Oversight committees and audits provide guardrails; they do not choose which projects come first.
California voters themselves have said they want this relationship to continue beyond Election Day. PACE/USC polling found that about 70% agreed that local School Boards are important because they keep education decisions close to the people affected by them, 63% called locally elected Boards an effective way to oversee schools, and 56% said they would like to be involved in education decisions in their community. Just over half said their local Board was responsive to community needs. A fairly obvious tension exists between wanting local control and knowing little about the people exercising it, which is probably worth resolving sometime before Election Day.
For me, the useful questions go beyond recognizing a name or agreeing with a candidate on the issue generating the most Nextdoor comments. Does this person understand the difference between governing a District and managing it? Have they shown they can absorb information, ask useful questions, and follow a complicated issue beyond a talking point? Do they understand contracts, compensation, facilities, and long-term obligations? How do they view the Board’s relationship with the superintendent? Can they listen to disagreement without assuming ignorance, bad faith, or a community conspiracy? When better information arrives, can they adjust without treating it as a humiliating defeat?
I also want to know whether a candidate has made the effort to understand the District they want to govern. LBUSD publishes budgets, agendas, contracts, policies, facilities plans, and many hours of Board meetings. Nobody needs to become an amateur school-finance accountant, and I would strongly recommend against making “watch every Board meeting” anyone’s new hobby, but there is plenty of territory between obsessive familiarity and strong opinions about an institution you have barely studied.
Those questions feel more urgent this year because three seats are being decided at once. Teachers and represented staff will work under the next majority’s decisions. Parents will live with its priorities in their children’s schools. Community members will fund the institution and watch decisions about facilities, contracts, leadership, and long-term spending unfold. Three new members could shift the Board’s direction in one election, with four-year terms that let those decisions accumulate.
Soon, I’ll look more closely at the candidates and slates/not-slates asking for those three seats, what they say they bring to the job, and what their public records tell us about how they understand it. For now, the job description deserves to be clear, because School Board elections may occupy a quieter stretch of the ballot, but the people selected there will make decisions affecting employees, families, students, facilities, and taxpayers long after the yard signs come down.
California research tells us voters often enter these races with limited information and rely on shortcuts. Laguna voters have enough at stake this year to read past the three words under a candidate’s name.
A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help voters make district decisions and to make public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.