In districts that held competitive school board elections this November 4, voters leaned toward candidates who emphasized equity and consensus-building, and rejected division and censorship. Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement that “in 27 states, voters elected strong public-school candidates in thousands of school board races across the country, bringing new leaders committed to making sure every student has the support they need to succeed.”
School boards have outsize influence over public school libraries and classroom access to books. American Library Association president Sam Helmick, commenting on this election’s outcomes for libraries in general, told PW, “I’m optimistic. We’re seeing that libraries are winning.” Helmick pointed to the “high turnout” across U.S. states and counties as evidence that Americans “see a need for checks and balances. Community-focused campaigns seem to be working.”
On the Wichita Public Schools board of education in Kansas, two newcomers gained seats, one a public educator supportive of the American Federation of Teachers and the other a K–12 parent who expressed concern that diversity, equity, and inclusion were being erased from state educational priorities. In New Mexico, two candidates supported by the Albuquerque Teachers Federation won seats on the Albuquerque Public Schools board, suggesting grassroots labor issues are on people’s minds in the southwest state’s largest school district. Likewise, in Colorado, teachers’ union-endorsed school board candidates racked wins in the Denver Public Schools and in Douglas, Jefferson, Mesa, and Teller Counties.
At the economic and social advocacy group MomsRising New Hampshire, senior director MacKenzie Nicholson cheered results in several of her state’s contests, just a few months after Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte vetoed a book removal bill and legislation to control classroom content. In New Hampshire, newly anointed Manchester School District board member “Sarah Georges is a fierce advocate for our kids and families,” Nicholson said. “She'll be a great advocate for honest history in our schools.” Nicholson celebrated special education teacher Alexander Dubois's win in Concord, N.H., along with the success of four candidates in Nashua.
In conservative Idaho, where a sixth-grade teacher in the West Ada School District was pressured by administrators to remove two inclusive signs, one reading “Everyone Is Welcome Here,” voters appear to have taken notice. Classroom décor representing ideological views is banned under Idaho House Bill 41, which went into effect in July. Yet Meghan Brown, a teacher who opposed the removal of the posters, won a West Ada School Board seat with 61.2% of the vote, in a state where incumbents otherwise carried the day.
Presently, 41 states and the District of Columbia require nonpartisan school board elections. In Pennsylvania, one of the few states that designate the party affiliations of school board candidates, Democrats swept the Central Bucks School District race this year to establish a 9–0 board majority. Eastern Pennsylvania’s Council Rock and Pennridge School Districts also saw significant gains for Democratic candidates.
‘Restoring the libraries’ in Texas?
In Texas, results in Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District, Granbury Independent School District, and elsewhere suggest that communities value the right to read, despite legislation including House Bill 900 and Senate Bills 12 and 13.
“The school board election results we saw here in Texas seem to show us that Texas parents are tired of culture wars being waged in their children’s classrooms and libraries,” Laney Hawes, cofounder of the Texas Freedom to Read Project (TFTRP), told PW. “The misinformation-based political messaging of ‘groomer’ librarians, the dangers of CRT, and the LGBTQ agenda in library books isn’t garnering the votes it did as recently as a year ago.”
Hawes pointed to Granbury ISD, where from 2022–2024 a law-enforcement officer sought but failed to garner indictments against school librarians for sharing potentially controversial books—a situation addressed in director Kim A. Snyder's documentary The Librarians. This year, three Granbury candidates derisively referred to in conservative media as “the DEI squad” won school board seats.
“It was almost entirely good news in Texas school board races,” said Frank Strong, who cofounded TFTRP with Hawes and Anne Russey. Strong pointed out that two candidates endorsed by the extremist group Moms for Liberty lost in Klein ISD, outside Houston, and that in Houston ISD, “two out of the three candidates—Maria Benzon and Michael McDonough—who ran on restoring the libraries won their races.”
Strong added that in Princeton ISD, northeast of Dallas, “incumbent Julia Schmoker, who ran on ‘cleaning up the libraries,’ lost her seat to Sonia Ledezma, a former teacher who stressed the importance of classroom libraries.” He called this decision “a big deal, because classroom libraries have been banned in the district in response to Senate Bill 13—teachers can only have a few pre-approved books in their classrooms.” In 2024, Princeton ISD removed 148 books from its libraries, under pressure from the far-right Citizens Defending Freedom; changes to the school board could signal a community shift.
Cameron Samuels, executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, said that SEAT is nonpartisan in its advocacy work but encourages its constituencies to follow school board decisionmaking and get out the vote. “For this most recent election, CyFair ISD was the major upset, in which all the incumbent trustees up for election who pushed the anti-trans and textbook ban policies have been ousted by voters,” Samuels said, noting that SEAT’s student organizers raised awareness of the policies. “It’s clear that the attention we brought to these local decisions was heard in and beyond the CyFair ISD community.”
SEAT and TFTRP are looking ahead to May 2026, which will bring the next round of Texas school board elections.
