"This was politics in its purest, ugliest and most destructive form"

In the Douglas County School District, the school board’s newly elected conservative majority terminated a popular superintendent earlier this month with little warning and no public debate. Staff protests, canceled classes, a student walkout, a lawsuit, a records request for teachers’ personal information and a 6-hour public meeting where residents criticized the board’s actions have unfolded dramatically over the past three weeks.

Developments there and elsewhere reflect the growing interest across the nation in school boards as a vessel for engaging in and mobilizing support for political causes, ranging from mask policies to stances on race, equity and sexuality issues…

Nationwide, 8 in 10 superintendents say handling political divisions is now the hardest part of their jobs, according to a national survey released this week by EAB, an educational research firm. More than 140 district leaders in 32 states weighed in.

Half the leaders said they’re considering or planning to leave in the next few years. Eight in 10 said they’d be more effective if they could spend more time with students — the very task often jettisoned to manage adult conflicts.