It’s funny that in many elections on the local level, people who are running for seats at least have on average a good grasp of what the job entails.

That’s not always true for the local school board.

For many candidates it appears that having little to no knowledge of what actually happens in public education is not an obstacle for running at all.

To be clear, only being a parent of a child in public schools does not make you an expert on making decisions that affect all schools and all students. What it does give you is an insight into your own student’s (students’) education. And if you are a “one size does not fit all” candidate, then that makes you even more distanced from what happens with other students at other schools.

Having a righteous anger about pandemic measures in the past does not make you an expert on how to handle issues in the future.

Screaming for giving schools “back to the parents” really means that you do not understand that school systems really are run by democratically elected people on the board – not administrators. It’s hard to think of any other public institution that is influenced more by parents locally.

Citing a lot of “problems” in the school system sometimes means that you have absolutely no solutions.

And screaming about financial transparency would mean something if you truly understood how funding and expenditures work in the public school system.

Yes, a passion for kids is a must. But that passion has to be coupled with common sense. There are too many extremist views in the platforms of many of the local school board candidates in this state.

Some of them will get elected sadly. And many of those who do will find out they had absolutely no business being on a school board. And they will find out how much they really did not know about schools.