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Illinois School Board Journal
November/December 2003

New members contrast sharply with retirees

by Gerald R. Glaub

Gerald R. Glaub is IASB deputy executive director for communications and policy services.

A recent survey of school board members who were first elected last April presents a sharp contrast with incumbents who reported prior to the election that they did not plan to run again.

For example, contrasted with retirees, the new board members appear substantially younger, more female, have fewer children (but more of school age), and are just as likely to be Democrats as Republicans. Retirees appear to have more children but fewer of school age and are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats.

The survey of incumbent board members was completed last winter with a questionnaire distributed to all school board members in the state. The 2,008 respondents included 290 who said their terms expired in April and they did not plan to seek re-election.

The picture of newly elected board members comes from a survey made available to participants at IASB workshops for new board members following the April election. Because only one new board member in four attended a workshop and only about one in 12 completed a survey, the 125 respondents represent a special group of people who (a) attend workshops and (b) fill out questionnaires. Results, therefore, should not be considered wholly reliable.

Nonetheless, compared with board members who planned to retire, the new board members who took part in the survey appear more likely to:

• represent larger school districts in small cities and suburban communities;
• be much younger;
• give their schools lower ratings on a variety of measures;
• be salaried professionals and less likely to be self-employed, farm operators, homemakers or retired;
• make more frequent use of the Internet;
• say they represent the interests of all citizens and less likely to say they represent the interests of children or the best interests of public education;
• say they ran for the board because they value public education and less likely say to make a specific improvement or fulfill a civic responsibility;
• say their top priority is to engage the community in creating and pursuing a vision for the schools rather than improve the district's financial condition;
• say the most positive thing about serving on the school board will be their involvement in public policy discussions and decisions;
• say the most negative thing about serving on the board will be the loss of privacy or time away from family, job and other pursuits.

The newcomers and retirees surveyed tend to be quite similar in terms of education level and household income.

Because all of the responding newcomers were at a workshop, they naturally tend as a group to put a high priority on training for board members. More than 70 percent said school board members need all of the training they can get, a response given by just 43 percent of the retiring members. The new board members also expressed greater interest in training programs of all types than their retiring counterparts.

In fact, 55 percent of the newcomers said they would support a law requiring all board members to participate in training. Just 48 percent of retiring members said they would support such a law.

One of the more unusual comparisons possible with the two surveys is the large amount of time newcomers said they expect to spend on board work compared with the comparatively smaller amount of time that retires said they actually spend.

Example: 43 percent of the retirees said they spent less than 10 hours a month on board work, but only 20 percent of the newcomers said they expect to spend that little. More than 44 percent of the newcomers said they thought they would spend more than 16 hours a month, but only 19 percent of the retiring members said they spent that much time.

Why the difference? It could be due to unrealistic estimates by inexperienced board members. Or it could be that a majority of the new board members surveyed represent districts where board members traditionally devote the most time - larger districts and those located in urban and suburban communities.