ABSTRACT
Districts are governed by school boards, also known as boards of directors or boards of trustees. School board organization can be town, district, or county-based. Southern states tend to have county boards. Reforms also made it harder for citizens to run for school boards by making them citywide elections, while at the same time voter participation was limited by designating school board elections at different times than the general election. District consolidation can be particularly harmful in rural areas due to the school district often being the one community hub in a sparsely populated region. With growing concerns over board governance, some reforms have led to increased local control by devolving decision making to the school level. The research on civic capacity highlights the increasing role of local political institutions in influencing educational change and the need to look beyond local school district governance in cities, especially to understand how current policies are conceptualized and implemented.
