Analysis of school district and board member characteristics, 2022

There are more than 13,000 K-12 public school districts in the United States. The school boards setting policy for those districts have more than 82,423 members. Due to the number of districts, the involvement of several layers of governments with overlapping jurisdictions, and limited data on small and rural schools, comprehensive information on school districts and the school board members who oversee them has, in the past, proven difficult to find. This article combines original research on public school districts in the country with research from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to provide an objective, comprehensive view of the people who serve on America’s local school boards.