Ohio — More than 1,300 new candidates threw their hats into the ring hoping to land a seat on a school board in the state.

In some districts, double the number of candidates ran for available seats. Several newcomers got the attention of voters as they campaigned on hot button issues during the election.

What You Need To Know

  • The culture war issue strategy worked for some candidates in places like Big Walnut Local Schools

  • Those who work with school districts said we can anticipate seeing more of this strategy being used in the near future

  • There is a concern about how parents will manage as they see the culture wars play out over this next term where candidates won on those issues

While hot button issues often take center stage, education advocates said they haven't seen things reach the magnitude that they have during the election.  

Jerry Rampelt, who works with school districts, said in some areas across the state like Big Walnut, running on issues that have stirred up citizens over the last year worked with a number of voters.

“In that school district, there were candidates who actually used the term 'woke' in their campaign literature and they were successful,” Rampelt said. That's in the sense that “woke” curriculum that divides students wouldn’t be welcome.

In other places like Hilliard, it also worked for two of three candidates who took a slightly different approach. Rampelt said, they “had what I would call a middle-of-the-road message on the place in history on how you deal with racial relations and slavery. Critical Race Theory is sometimes used to describe it.” 

However, in other places across the state, Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, released a statement saying, “Ohio’s voters saw right through all the nonsense and manufactured controversy around masks, vaccines and curriculum this election season, and Ohio’s lawmakers should take notice: Attacking local public schools is fast becoming the third-rail of Ohio politics. Voters want Ohio policymakers to fulfill their constitutional obligations to provide great schools for all of Ohio’s children regardless of where they’re from or what they look like. The election results should serve as a cold bucket of water to those who are trying to pursue divisive political agendas that have nothing to do with educating kids.” 

Regardless of how things turned out in individual districts, “I would anticipate we’re going to see more of this. That this was the test drive in 2021,” Rampelt explained.

Until the next round of elections, Rampelt wonders how will “parents feel about the culture wars going forward in their own school district,” how will they handle it all, and how privatization of public education play out over the long term.

Ohio lawmakers are already considering legislation that will give parents more options to remove their children from public schools and send them to private schools at taxpayer expense. It’s something that worries public school proponents as more dollars for public schools could shift to private schools.