[westbywest]

The increasingly toxic politics (arguably by design) emerging around school board elections is very recent addition to disincentives. I live in a Midwest city where suburban school districts that previously wooed young professionals away from urban core now frequently feature nasty culture war fights, book banning, etc. It's notable for impacting generally wealthier households that could bear the expense of relocating to suburban municipalities with higher cost of living/taxes to access better schools.

[thriftwy]

I wonder why all of troublemakers are not ejected from the system? You would think any "komsomol" types would be flushed by democratic system whereas they would be retained in assignments based system. Are there parents who genuinely want culture wars / book banning types deciding how their children study?

[ryandrake]

Increasingly, the troublemakers are gaining overwhelming support from the electorate. We used to rely on the fact that the belligerent, crazy, culture wars / book burning folks were a tiny minority, kept powerless by the democratic system. As their numbers grow, the democratic system starts to work for them. Many places (at least in the USA) have crossed the rubicon demographic wise, and the inmates are now running the asylum.

[westbywest]

An underlying motivation to this new power-mongering in school district politics is that education is typically the 2nd largest budget item in most US states. The "troublemakers" despite their theatrics also as a category tend to overwhelmingly support schemes that divert education funds to private entities, e.g. vouchers, tax-credit scholarships.

[thriftwy]

So instead of helping the vulnerable groups get education, they will try to divert as much funds as possible from that goal?

I alao thought that getting education outside of public one-size-fits-all school was a conservative thing (religious schools, private schools) - especially if enabled by a voucher. Is that is what politics are about?