Political Party and Oregon’s School Boards
I started an internship with Terrapin Data in October, and one of my first assignments involved a project for the XQ Institute with a mission of collecting school board meeting information for every public school district across the country. When my mentor, Jim Cupples, and I looked for our next project, we knew we wanted to focus on local government. We created Political Ducks, a collective tasked to examine the granular side of politics through overlooked and neglected datasets. Together with our tech-wiz, Casey Black, our first task was evaluating the Oregon school boards.
For this project we utilized data collected through individual websites and the Oregon voter file. What we learned was astounding.
Over the next few weeks, my team and I will be sharing our findings on Medium. First, I’ll describe the insights we gained from examining political affiliations.
Oregon is known for being a “liberal paradise,” particularly in the larger cities like Eugene and Portland. To most, we are the land of the hipsters, die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters, and avid kombucha fans. While these stereotypes may ring true in our urban areas, the state itself is generally politically balanced.
Democrats, as expected, have a majority for voters state-wide. However, this majority is very slim, and barely passes the second most popular affiliation, the Non-Affiliated.
The Democrats barely fall short of 1 million voters. Non-Affiliates are slightly less, a little over 900,000 registered voters. And the Republicans come in a solid third place, with a little more than 700,000 voters.
Looking at the state level, these alignments are fairly well represented in the legislature. The urban areas have more progressive representatives, and the rural communities are generally more conservative. Our national congressional officials are predominately liberal, with one conservative representative. But something changes when we move to the macro: these representations are inverted.
Republicans outnumber Non-Affiliated and Democrat school board members. Compared to their state-wide turnout, they are barely represented.
Over 500 school board members are Republican, or almost half. The Democrats have roughly 400 members, and the Non-Affiliates have barely 150. When you turn to the smaller parties, the representations are pretty normal — Independents, Constitutions, Libertarians, and Other affiliations roughly resemble their state-wide numbers.
Republicans exceedingly outperform on the school board than their state average, almost by 20 points. Meanwhile, Non-Affiliated voters possess 14% of all school board seats in Oregon. Oregon is, generally, significantly more politically diverse than its school board representation.
Alone, it is clear that Republicans dominate school board representation. They have 10% more seats than Democrats, and nearly 4 times more seats than the Non-Affiliates. Republicans are more compelled to run for school boards than any other political party in Oregon. Why? What is motivating them at a national and local level to run for the school boards? What are the policy implications of this?
You may be wondering how these numbers compare with the local affiliations of community members within each district. Some match precisely — eastern Oregon is predominately conservative, as exhibited both in the metrics for voters and the school board members. Almost 60% of voters in Harney County School District 4 are Republican, and 3 of its 5 board members share that same affiliation. The urban areas, like Portland and Eugene, are vastly more liberal than the rural communities. 55% of voters in Portland Public Schools are Democrats, as are 6 of the 7 board members.
This pattern changes when districts are predominately Non-Affiliated, as seen in Western Oregon. Lincoln County School District is 39% Non-Affiliated, the predominate affiliation in the area, but every school board member is either Republican or Democrat. Most of the districts where voters are predominately Non-Affiliated— like Bend-La Pine, South Lane, and Central Curry — have Democratic majorities on the school boards.
The only school board that has a Non-Affiliated majority is Black Butte 41. 3 of the 5 members are registered Non-Affiliates. However, 40% of Black Butte’s voters are registered Democrats, and only 28% are registered Non-Affiliates.
While I was collecting the data for this project, I noticed that the school boards with actual student involvement and input were in more urban areas. Coming back to those boards, members were either politically diverse or predominantly left-leaning. While I’m not here to tell you which parties make the best school board — remember, they are technically apolitical positions — I can speak from personal experience working with my own school board in high school.
As a Junior I tried to petition the school board to improve the dress code (which was sexist and discriminatory) to no avail. I actually got into trouble with my school’s administration and received a referral for my work. I was not surprised to learn that that board was not politically diverse, but actually quite conservative.
School boards need diverse perspectives and insights to ensure students, parents, and teachers are receiving the best support possible. At the end of the day, that’s what the school board is there for: the community. Without accurate community input, schools will continue operating in a broken system. Oregon has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country, and consistently poor test scores. Would those metrics be improved with greater democratic participation?
If you’re interested in exploring our map on Oregon school boards, visit it here:
And if you’re interested in learning more about Oregon voters in each school district, visit our second map here:
