What It’s Like to Be a New School Board Member: Where Democracy and Education Meet

By Jo-Ann Johnston

At age 21, Michigan college student Ethan Lang has already started a career in local elected public service. He has already served most of the first year of a six-year term on his local public school board. 

What’s more, he regularly encourages friends and peers – young Democrats – who want to see political or societal changes to run, too. Soon. 

“I always say to people considering running for office: the way to see change is to be it,” Lang added.

As Lang is also a volunteer with Project 2029, he agreed to be interviewed to share his civic life experiences. Lang stressed his comments reflect only his own experience, and not the views of the Grand Blanc Community Schools Board of Education as a whole. 

School board members across the country have an association and surveys that help people understand common duties.  At first, for new candidates, most legal, financial, and academic topics may be unfamiliar.

Getting onto a school board and fulfilling the duties capably does require a learning curve, Lang acknowledged.

But then again, everybody will have that learning curve the first time they serve, he said, and then they will have another learning curve and another, so a new candidate is not alone in that. “No one will ever know everything,” Lang said. “The most senior member of the school board is always learning,” he added. “Even the most senior members of school boards are always continuing their education.”

A willingness to absorb new information, an aspiration for good school experiences for the community, and some experience working on a team to meet goals, Lang said, are the key attributes needed to carry out the duties of a candidate and a school board member.

Sure, it may help a candidate to have prior experience in teaching, but Lang has found his youth carried benefits, too.

Know your why 

In the beginning, Lang had a natural inclination to support education that he attributes to his family. He liked his suburban school district, the same one he serves now. His mom is a longtime elementary music school teacher (kindergarten to third grade) in a neighboring district. By nature, he is community oriented, much like other, older relatives.

During his own high school years, Lang asked to be the student body representative to the school board. “I enjoyed that a lot,” he explained.

As the student behavior handbook was being updated at that time, Lang as a student got to carry his direct observations from his own classes to the board discussions. He was the one who could see how many students in a class of 25 were actually fiddling with smart phones or using headphones rather than listening to teachers or working on assignments. He graduated from high school in 2022.

As an adult

Lang first decided to go to college about an hour away from home and combine an education (teaching) major with coursework in political science. His plan was to teach middle school.

But then, the plan needed tweaking. Lang had joined a Michigan college Democrats group, and held a statewide office as press secretary. He realized how much he enjoys the active roles in community service of either holding representative office himself, or working in the political realm as a specialized political reporter or a high-level campaign advisor.

But to get to do that, he had to adjust both his campus choice and major. By transferring to the University of Michigan Flint, Lang got to adjust his degree plan to communications with a minor in political science. He lives with his family and only has to drive about eight miles to campus. 

Timing was critical

This happened to put him back in town when two members of the local board were set to retire at the end of 2024. Lang recalled his earlier work with the school board and decided to run in the November 2024 local election.

The seats on Grand Blanc Community Schools Board (and others in Michigan), are non-partisan, meaning no party affiliation is shown on the ballot. Candidates have to project their particular beliefs, platforms, and political leanings themselves to voters.

One of Lang’s consistent values has been to support diversity and inclusion, to communicate the schools are for everyone. With his youth and Korean ethnicity, he saw the opening on the board as an opportunity to bring some diversity to the body.

He raised money for lawn signs and postcards to campaign, and posted on social media, but Lang did not have an opponent. So he was hoping for a healthy voter turnout during the election, with the voting public coming to recognize Lang and accept him as a public servant on the school board. There are about 7,600 students enrolled in the district.

This experience of running unopposed is actually pretty common in America’s school board elections – the most recent, major, multi-state research study found that more than one-third of races are uncontested. 

Lang knows that it is both difficult to get people to run, and even to make voters aware of what the school board actually does. And yet, school boards hold the highest level of authority over education in their communities, though state governments also have oversight and legal duties. 

In practical terms, most local school boards conduct the hiring and firing of school superintendents, who in turn act like chief executive officers running the district. Lang noted the board also approves a budget plan each year to keep the schools running, sets policies for academic topics and behavior, and approves the teachers’ working contract. 

The board meets twice a month, at an early weeknight time, to handle the responsibilities. Lang has attended all the meetings, and, as he is able, goes to events such as graduations, concerts and games to communicate his support and interest to the school staff who run the events, and to the parents whose children are taking part. 

Lang is paid $30 per school board meeting or workshop, or $60 a month. It’s enough to cover his monthly fitness center fee, he quipped. 

Low pay for school board service, or no pay, is common among smaller American school boards. Salaries are high enough to help support a household only for full-time board positions in big cities.Those realities can make it hard to attract enough candidates to give voters a choice at each election.

But Lang was excited to be seated, to see the board grow in diversity, and to see the district complete several construction projects. Students and families now have an updated athletic stadium; a new band field; and pavement, playground, and school campus road repairs. The district repaid the financing for the projects ahead of schedule.

That was "intrinsically rewarding,” Lang said. And there are more improvements to make through a new project, next year, giving him more to look forward to.

Next: The Project 29 Blog brings you a series on local and county electoral offices that voters may know little about. We start with school boards.