What matters in school reopening plans: an analysis of the impact of school board demographics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Did the demographic composition of American school boards influence a given school district’s reopening responses and social safety measures to the COVID-19 pandemic? We explore how factors of race and gender of school board members influences how districts implement remote, in-person, or hybridized schooling measures. Using an original data set of 1893 school districts and 11,186 school board members, we test whether the demographic composition of a school board is predictive of school reopening plans and masking policies. We find that race and partisanship are influential in determining the usage of remote instruction and safety measures. Importantly, the congruence between local- and state-level partisanship is also found to be influential in determining the intensity of safety measures. We find that the influence of identity characteristics of school board members is less critical to shaping decision-making processes than the partisanship of a state’s governor. In Democratic states, the governor’s executive orders tend to override the influence school board members’ racial and gender identities, versus in Republican states the school board’s demographic composition is more predictive of school reopening plans and masking policies.