Tag: board

  • Iowa Lawmakers Seek to End Student Vote on Board of Regents

    Iowa Lawmakers Seek to End Student Vote on Board of Regents

    The University of Iowa is one of three public institutions overseen by the board.

    A voting student position on the Iowa Board of Regents would be eliminated under a new bill advanced by the Hawkeye State’s House higher education subcommittee, The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.

    If passed and signed into law, the bill would replace the student regent with a ninth one appointed by the governor. In addition, seven new nonvoting member seats would be established: three for students, two for state senators and two for state representatives. 

    The proposed legislation also details several new policies and programs the board would be required to establish and would give members of the state’s General Assembly the ability to override board and university expenditures through a joint resolution.

    The policies outlined align with the key higher education priorities for Republicans in the statehouse who hold a majority. They include:

    • Establishing a post-tenure review process
    • Developing approval standards for new academic programs
    • Barring faculty senates from “exercising any governance authority over the institution”
    • Conducting biennial reviews of all general education requirements and low-enrollment academic programs
    • Creating an ombudsman office that will “investigate complaints of violations of state or federal law or board policy”

    Iowa’s Board of Regents serves as a centralized governing body overseeing all three of the state’s four-year institutions—the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. Public community colleges are overseen by locally elected boards.

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  • N.C. Elections Board Rejects Campus Polling Centers

    N.C. Elections Board Rejects Campus Polling Centers

    Some students protested the decision.

    David Walter Banks/The Washington Post/Getty Images

    Ahead of the 2026 primaries, the North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected a plan Tuesday to open an early-voting center on the Greensboro campus of North Carolina A&T State University, according to NC Newsline. 

    The Republican-controlled board also voted to close the existing early-voting centers at Elon University and Western Carolina University. 

    After the vote, a group of N.C. A&T students who traveled to Raleigh for the board meeting gathered in the boardroom, protesting the decision. But Francis De Luca, chair of the board, threatened to call the cops if they didn’t leave, according to the news outlet. 

    De Luca, who voted against the early-voting sites, said he’s not in favor of them for numerous reasons. “There’s no parking,” he said. “They may set aside parking; if it’s filled, you’re going to get a ticket. We don’t put sites where there’s no parking anywhere else.”

    But Siobhan Millen, a Democratic member of the board who voted for the voting centers, said the move puts “student voting is in the crosshairs.”

    Without voting sites on campus, students—including many who don’t own cars—will have to travel to off-campus precincts, though some in favor of axing campus polling centers have described them as redundant. Zayveon Davis, a voter engagement leader at N.C. A&T, said the HBCU would provide shuttles to take students to the nearest polling place. 

    Nonetheless, he called the decision “disappointing” and reflective of broader Republican-led efforts to restrict voting access, especially for marginalized communities. 

    “I hope that everybody leaves here knowing that your voice does matter. Your vote does matter,” he told NC Newsline. “And if it didn’t, they wouldn’t be working this hard to take it away.”

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  • Lane Community College Board Approves Budget Reduction

    Lane Community College Board Approves Budget Reduction

    The Lane Community College Board of Education voted to approve college leaders’ plans for a budget reduction on Jan. 7, despite fierce pushback from the faculty union. The latest controversy comes amid a dramatic year for the Oregon community college, marked by long, fractious board meetings and an ongoing battle between administrators and faculty over stalled labor negotiations and course cuts.

    College administrators argue the approved proposal—cutting spending by $8 million over the next three years—is a financial necessity. They say the college regularly falls short of a board requirement to maintain 10 percent of its balance in reserves. Administrators also conducted a new multiyear forecast that predicted expenses are going to grow.

    The college is expected to be “in a deficit every year … if we continue on the same trends that we have been in the last two or three years,” said Kara Flath, Lane’s vice president of finance and operations. The plan also proposes using some of the freed-up money for deferred maintenance and other projects.

    But faculty union leaders disagree with the administration’s view of the college’s financial present and future. Adrienne Mitchell, president of the faculty union, the Lane Community College Education Association, believes leadership’s projections are pessimistic and that a roughly 8 percent cut to the $104 million operating budget is excessive.

    “We don’t believe any of those cuts are necessary,” Mitchell said. “Currently, all of our funding sources—state funding, property taxes and student tuition revenue—are up.”

    The union came out with an independent report last week suggesting that the college is in a sound financial position and should invest more, not less, in faculty and the campus over all. But faculty and administrators fundamentally disagree on how much spending will rise and what tranches of money the college has at its disposal.

    The union’s perspective that the college can spend less “makes the numbers look better,” Flath said. “But as finance people, we have decades of finance experience” and such cost estimates are “not fiscally viable.”

    Mitchell also argued that Oregon Local Budget Law requires the board to follow a legal process that includes forming a committee of board and nonboard members, presenting the budget and hosting a public hearing, before formally adopting a budget. The union put out a legal memo on the matter in September.

    But administrators say their overarching plan isn’t the final budget—it doesn’t specify where exactly cuts will be made—so it doesn’t need to go through such a process yet. They said they plan to review programs, solicit community feedback and draw up a list of recommended cuts in the spring.

    Board members, initially skeptical of the plan’s lack of specificity, held multiple ad hoc budget committee meetings last week to discuss it ahead of the meeting on Wednesday, which lasted almost five hours.

    Board member Zach Mulholland said at the Wednesday meeting that he still sees “red flags and concerns with regards to unspecified cuts” but concluded, “at this moment in time, this appears to be a balanced proposal.” Mulholland and other board members on the ad hoc committee recommended the board move forward with the plan, as long as it includes annual updates and regular progress reports from administrators.

    “Now maybe as a college we can work together,” Flath said.

    Fraught Faculty Relations

    But the college is also mired in other controversies. The faculty union, which represents about 525 full- and part-time professors, has been without a contract since June as administrators and faculty clash over the details.

    Discussions have soured over disagreements about workloads, class-size limits, cost-of-living adjustments, the timing of layoff notices and the college’s efforts to strike some provisions, which Mitchell says amounts to a “net divestment” of over a million dollars in spending on faculty. The administration argued some of the issues in the proposed contract aren’t directly connected to faculty benefits, including proposals to add immigration status to the college’s nondiscrimination policy and ramp up campus safety measures.

    Grant Matthews, vice president of academic affairs, said significant progress has been made since the summer, but “really, we’re stuck on economics.”

    “We’re trying to really have a fiscally sustainable institution, and the proposals that we’re receiving at the table are not fiscally responsible,” he said. He estimated that the current contract proposal could cost the college up to $61 million.

    Professors aren’t pleased with how the process is going. In a December survey of 271 faculty members, 87 percent reported low morale, 90 percent said they didn’t trust the college’s president and 69 percent reported that they fear retaliation for expressing their views. The union has also raised concerns that faculty of color are leaving the college. On Wednesday, about 75 union members and supporters picketed outside ahead of the board meeting.

    Two more bargaining sessions are planned for this month, and mediation is scheduled after.

    Recent course cuts have also frayed relations between faculty and college leaders. Lane cut about 100 course sections for the winter and spring terms after introducing a new system that allows students to sign up in the fall for courses for the entire year.

    Administrators said this is a typical number of course cuts for the college, on par with past years, to optimize their academic offerings, and advisers are ensuring students still get the classes they need. But Mitchell described the move as a blow to part-time faculty, who lost classes that might have filled up later in the year. The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Board, arguing the eliminated courses should have been a part of bargaining. Mitchell also worries the cuts are a roadblock for students who need to take certain courses, noting that a popular biology class—a prerequisite for many health professions courses—has a wait list of 168 students.

    Leadership Tensions

    The board, meanwhile, has had its own share of drama over the past year.

    The faculty union has accused administrators of encroaching on board responsibilities and criticized the board for failing to exercise its authority.

    “There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the administration essentially taking over the role of the Board of Education,” Mitchell said.

    Meanwhile, in August, a third-party report concluded that Mulholland, formerly the board chair, and other board members discriminated against President Stephanie Bulger, a Black woman, on the basis of race and sex. The report described Mulholland and some other board members as displaying a dismissive or hostile attitude toward Bulger, cutting her off in conversations, and deferring questions to male staff. The report also found that Mulholland had intimidated a student. In September, the board censured the former board chair, who apologized, and the full board then came out with a joint apology.

    “We are deeply sorry for the negative impact our behavior has had on you and the college community at large,” said Austin Fölnagy, the current board chair, who was also accused of adopting a dismissive tone toward the president. “President Bulger, please accept the board’s apology for treating you badly.”

    Mitchell said the union is “very concerned about any type of discrimination, and we think it’s really important for everyone on the campus to feel safe.”

    The college’s accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, also deemed the college “substantially in compliance” with accreditation standards but “in need of improvement” in a notice last March. The accreditor recommended the college evaluate its internal communication and ensure decision-making processes are “inclusive of all constituents,” among other suggestions.

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  • UVA Board Members Blast Lawmakers, Faculty in Texts

    UVA Board Members Blast Lawmakers, Faculty in Texts

    University of Virginia board members blasted state lawmakers as “extremist” and faculty members as “out of control” in a batch of text messages published by the Washington Post.

    Richmond-based author Jeff Thomas sued the university to force the release of communications between board members and university officials from June 2023 through last month; then he released the 947 pages of messages to the newspaper.

    In recent months, the Board of Visitors—stocked with GOP donors and other political figures—has defied state lawmakers, including Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger, over calls to pause a presidential search. That search concluded with an internal hire last month, though multiple critics have flagged process concerns and state lawmakers have also voiced displeasure.

    The text messages show that board members reacted sharply last year when a Democrat-controlled board rejected multiple university board picks by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. The governor lost a subsequent legal fight to seat the picks and several boards remain hobbled.

    In August text messages to Jim Donovan, one of the rejected picks, UVA Board Rector Rachel Sheridan, called the General Assembly’s refusal to approve Youngkin’s nominees “Very disappointing. Completely unprecedented and destructive.” Sheridan added: “I hope this backfires politically and reveals them to be the extremists they are.”

    Sheridan did not apologize or backtrack after the texts were released. In a statement to the Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed, she wrote: “I respect the General Assembly’s authority on these matters but share the frustration of those four individuals that were summarily rejected without the benefit of consideration of their merit and the value these individuals have given and could have continued to give to the university community.”

    Her remarks highlight tensions between the board and the General Assembly, which have spiked since President Jim Ryan resigned under pressure in June and the university signed an agreement with the Department of Justice in October to close multiple investigations into alleged civil rights violations.

    In other text messages, Vice Rector Porter Wilkinson expressed frustration with the UVA Faculty Senate, which has demanded answers about whether Ryan was pushed out by the board and the DOJ agreement.

    When Board of Visitors Secretary Scott Ballenger texted Wilkinson in October that the Faculty Senate was debating a resolution to demand a meeting with Sheirdan and then-Interim President Paul Mahoney, Wilkinson responded “That is insane.” When he told her the Faculty Senate was weighing a resolution of no-confidence in Mahoney, she wrote: “So embarrassing. For them.” Wilkinson added in response to another text from Ballenger: “This is out of control.”

    The published text messages also expose the board’s dramatic behavior behind the scenes. In a text to Sheridan, former Rector Robert Hardie, a Democratic appointee who has since rotated off the board, made vague references to an “unhinged” board member threatening the university administration.

    Hardie called board members Stephen P. Long and “BE” (presumably Bert Ellis) “assholes.” (Ellis was removed by Youngkin in late March for his combative style on the board.) Hardie referred to board members BE, Long, Douglas Wetmore and Paul Harris as “four horses asses.” Hardie also complained about a member that he did not name trying to stir controversy and a “food fight.”

    The full batch of text messages can be read here.

    The release of the texts—spurred by legal action—comes as UVA has been slow to release information in response to public records requests, prompting criticism from a local lawmaker and others. Citing “a significant backlog,” UVA has not yet fulfilled a public records request regarding communications with federal officials sent by Inside Higher Ed in October.

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  • Youngkin Loses Battle Over Board Picks

    Youngkin Loses Battle Over Board Picks

    Governor-elect Spanberger will now get to select 22 board members.

    Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images

    The legal battle over whether Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s university board appointees will take their seats is over after a judge set a trial for 2026, Virginia Business reported. Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger will assume office next month, rendering the lawsuit moot.

    The case will be dismissed, shutting down an effort to install the Republican governor’s board picks, many of whom had previously worked for or donated to the GOP and were rejected by Virginia Democrats. Now Spanberger, a Democrat, will be able to name 22 board members that otherwise would have been appointed by Youngkin, giving her the opportunity to shift the political balance of boards away from the right.

    Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares had sought to expedite the legal fight by asking Virginia’s Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling that determined that blocked board picks could not take their seats. Youngkin has argued the board appointments must be rejected by the full Senate, not just the Democrat-led Privileges and Elections Committee, which voted down multiple picks.

    However, Virginia’s Supreme Court declined to hear the case, remanding it to a lower court. 

    Spanberger and state Democrats are expected to quickly fill multiple vacancies that have left boards hobbled, including at George Mason University, which does not have a quorum. GMU’s board met recently, despite the lack of a quorum and legal questions about their ability to do so.

    Youngkin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

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  • LAWSUIT: New Jersey school board member silenced for asking constituents about a proposed tax increase

    LAWSUIT: New Jersey school board member silenced for asking constituents about a proposed tax increase

    ALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J., Nov. 20, 2025 — A local school board member’s Facebook post to community members about a tax hike should have started a conversation — instead, it led to censorship.

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is suing the commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Education and members of the state’s School Ethics Commission to stop them from abusing a law to chill the speech of an elected school board member who used social media to seek her constituents’ input. 

    “I didn’t join the school board to be told to shut up,” said Gail Nazarene, an elected school board member, Navy veteran, and grandma in Alloway Township. “New Jersey officials claim the authority to punish me simply for asking folks questions about important issues, particularly when it affects their wallets. I should be free to communicate with constituents and get their views without being censored by state officials.”

    COURTESY PHOTOS OF GAIL NAZARENE

    In April, Gail used Facebook to discuss tax increases and other school issues with constituents. In one post, she asked, “As a resident of Alloway, I am wondering what other residents think about a 9-15% school tax increase?” She clarified in her later posts that she was asking in her personal capacity. But another school board member saw the posts and filed a complaint against her, claiming Gail had violated New Jersey’s School Ethics Act because she allegedly had spoken on the board’s behalf. The complaint is pending before the state’s School Ethics Commission. 

    “Americans deserve to know what their elected officials think about important issues,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Zahn. “New Jersey is muzzling elected officials and preventing them from talking with their community, the very people they were elected to represent.”

    The state broadly interprets the School Ethics Act to bar elected officials from discussing issues relating to schools on social media. And this isn’t the first time it’s done so. The School Ethics Commission has previously warned elected officials against engaging with constituents on social media and previously interpreted the act to prevent elected school board members from discussing matters of public concern on social media and in op-eds. 

    But the First Amendment protects Gail’s right to speak freely on such issues. 

    Gail has stopped soliciting constituent feedback online. She fears any posts about school board issues will lead to punishment, including reprimand, censure, suspension, or removal. But she also is concerned about the loss of First Amendment freedoms for her and her constituents. 

    “When the state silences school board members, parents and taxpayers are kept in the dark,” said FIRE attorney Greg Greubel. “The School Ethics Act can’t be turned into an unconstitutional gag rule.”

    Today’s federal lawsuit asks the court to declare New Jersey’s School Ethics Act unconstitutional as interpreted by the state and stop its use against elected officials speaking out about public issues. 

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

    CONTACT
    Katie Stalcup, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]

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  • Texas v. Texas: State AG sues higher ed board over work-study programs

    Texas v. Texas: State AG sues higher ed board over work-study programs

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    Dive Brief:

    • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing his state’s higher education coordinating board to end three work-study programs, alleging they are “unconstitutional and discriminatory” against religious students. 
    • Under the rules established by the Texas Legislature, the programs require participating employers to provide students with nonsectarian work. Two of the programs also make students attending seminary or receiving religious instruction ineligible to participate.
    • The lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges that those provisions amount to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board “prohibiting participants from engaging in sectarian activities, including sectarian courses of study, to be eligible to receive state benefit.” He asked a state judge to bar the board from administering the programs.

    Dive Insight:

    Paxton argued in the lawsuit that the state work-study programs — all of which are need-based — exclude otherwise eligible students “based solely on the religious character of their course of study,” violating the First Amendment. 

    Texas is home to at least 14 seminary schools, according to The Association of Theological Schools.

    The work-study programs also “effectively eliminate religious organizations with only sectarian employment opportunities from participating,” Paxton said.

    The state board did not immediately respond to questions Monday.

    The three programs being contested are:

    • The Texas College Work-Study Program.
    • The Texas Working Off-Campus: Reinforcing Knowledge and Skills Internship Program, better known as the TXWORKS internship.
    • The Texas Innovative Adult Career Education, or ACE, Grant Program.

    The work-study program and TXWORKS internship partially fund jobs for eligible students to help them pay for college. The ACE program provides grants to nonprofits “for use in job training, vocational education, and related workforce development” for eligible students, according to the lawsuit.

    All the programs are geared toward low-income students, though some also target other demographic groups as well, such as ACE’s focus on veterans.

    In a Friday statement, Paxton called the laws governing the programs “anti-Christian” and said they should “be completely wiped off the books.”

    This is not the first time Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, has sought to overturn Texas state law through the courts. In June, he worked with the Trump administration to have a federal judge strike down Texas’ decades-old law offering in-state tuition rates to undocumented students.

    Paxton’s lawsuit comes after a federal judge earlier this year struck down a Minnesota law that excluded some religious colleges from participating in a publicly funded dual enrollment program.

    Minnesota’s dual enrollment program previously barred colleges from participating if they required students to sign faith statements. In August, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ruled that the law infringed on the colleges’ constitutional rights by making them choose between participating in the program and practicing their religion.

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  • Texas A&M board to vote on sweeping classroom censorship proposal

    Texas A&M board to vote on sweeping classroom censorship proposal

    This Wednesday, the Texas A&M System Board of Regents will vote on whether to give university presidents sweeping veto power over what professors can teach. Hiring professors with PhDs is meaningless if administrators are the ones deciding what gets taught.

    Under the proposal, any course material or discussion related to “race or gender ideology” or “sexual orientation or gender identity” would need approval from the institution’s president. Faculty would need permission to teach students about not just modern controversies, but also civil rights, the Civil War, or even ancient Greek comedies.

    This is not just bad policy. It invites unlawful censorship, chills academic freedom, and undermines the core purpose of a university. Faculty will start asking not “Is this accurate?” but “Will this get me in trouble?”

    That’s not education, it’s risk management. 

    FIRE urges the board to reject this proposal. And we will be there to defend any professor punished for doing what scholars are hired to do: pursue the truth wherever it leads.

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  • Fla. Board Says Syllabi, Reading Lists Must Be Posted Publicly

    Fla. Board Says Syllabi, Reading Lists Must Be Posted Publicly

    Already, the University of Florida requires professors to post their syllabi online—but only three days prior to the start of class.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Liudmila Chernetska, Davizro and DenisTangneyJr/iStock/Getty Images

    Faculty at all Florida public universities must now make syllabi, as well as a list of required or recommended textbooks and instructional materials for each class, available online and searchable for students and the general public for five years.

    The new policy is part of an amendment to the Florida Board of Governors’ regulation on “Textbook and Instructional Materials Affordability and Transparency,” and it passed unanimously without discussion at a board meeting Thursday. On the agenda item description, board officials cited improved transparency as the impetus for the rule, which is meant to help students “make informed decisions as they select courses.” But some faculty members say it’s designed to chill academic freedom and allow the public to police what professors teach in the classroom.

    “Many of my colleagues and I believe that this is yet another overreach by political appointees to let Florida’s faculty know that they are being watched for potentially teaching any content that the far right finds problematic,” said John White, a professor of English education and literacy at the University of North Florida. He said officials at his institution told faculty members they must upload their syllabi for 2026 spring semester classes to Simple Syllabus, an online syllabi hosting platform, by December.

    “Florida’s universities are being run in an Orwellian manner, and working as a faculty member in Florida is increasingly like living in the world of Fahrenheit 451,” he said.

    According to the approved amendment, professors must post the syllabi “as early as is feasible” but no fewer than 45 days prior to the start of class. Public syllabi must include “course curriculum, required and recommended textbooks and instructional materials, goals and student expectations of the course, and how student performance will be measured and evaluated, including the grading scale.” Individualized courses like independent study and theses are exempt from the rule.

    The Florida Board of Governors did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s questions about the amended policy, including a question about when it will start being enforced.

    Concerns About Faculty Safety

    It’s not a unique policy, even in Florida. Since 2013, the University of Florida has required professors to post their syllabi online—but only three days prior to the start of class, and they have to remain publicly available for just three semesters. Now, all Florida public universities, including the University of Florida, must follow the new rules. A UF spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed the university is waiting for the Board of Governors to share guidance about when the new policy will be enforced.

    “Even before the rule, most faculty members have been posting anyway to advertise their course. Faculty members in fact prefer to post in advance and certainly have nothing against posting,” said Meera Sitharam, a professor in the department of computer and information science and engineering, and president of the University of Florida’s 2,150-member United Faculty of Florida union. The faculty she spoke with primarily took issue with the new 45-day deadline, which is “quite early for a posting containing all the details” of a syllabus, she said. They are also concerned that they will no longer be able to make changes to reading lists midsemester.

    “A good-quality discussion class would permit the instructor to assign new reading as the course proceeds. This would now be disallowed,” Sitharam said. “The effect of this is likely to be that an overlong reading list is posted by the faculty member just to make sure that they don’t miss anything they might want to assign. And much of the reading list may never be assigned.”

    Texas similarly requires all faculty at public institutions to make a version of their syllabus public. Indiana implemented a law in July requiring public institutions to publish all course syllabi on their websites, and this fall, the University System of Georgia introduced a new policy requiring faculty to post syllabi and curriculum vitae on institution websites.

    Some faculty members in those states have seen firsthand the risks of posting syllabi online; several professors have been harassed and doxed over course content in their online syllabi. Florida faculty are concerned the same thing could happen to them; several faculty members believe that the board passed the rule with the intent of siccing the general public on professors who teach about topics that conservative politicians don’t like.

    “The sole purpose is to subcontract out the oversight of all of our courses, so that if there’s some independent entity or individual that wants to look at the College of Education at Florida State, and they spend two months doing a deep dive into all of the classes, then they’ll come up with: ‘Here at Florida State we found these five classes that don’t meet [our standards],’” said William Trapani, communications and multimedia studies professor at Florida Atlantic University. “Why else would you have that capacity to make this data bank and make it publicly accessible for five years?”

    Stan Kaye, a professor emeritus of design and technology at the University of Florida, sees concerns about the policy as overblown. “I cannot see why making syllabi public at a public institution is a problem for anyone—I would think that promoting your work and subject is generally a good thing,” he said. “If you are afraid you are teaching something illegal or that lacks academic integrity and you want to keep it secret, that should be a problem.”

    Faculty safety is the primary concern for James Beasley, an associate professor of English and president of the faculty association at North Florida.

    “The most important issue related to this requirement is the safety of our faculty, both online and in person. The concern is that faculty will be exposed to external trolls of course content and that the publication of course locations will expose faculty to location disclosures,” Beasley said in an email. While it is typical for syllabi to include course meeting times and locations, the new board policy does not require that information to be posted online.

    Trapani also said that because of the five-year syllabus retention period, faculty are worried they could be retroactively harassed for teaching about something the public finds unfavorable from a class several years ago. White has similar concerns.

    “I’m teaching a course that utilizes neo-Marxist theory to critique the idea of meritocracy—will the Board of Governors or members of the public falsely claim I’m teaching communism or that I’m teaching students to hate their country? If a history professor or a social studies education professor is discussing redlining or Jim Crow laws, will they later be critiqued for teaching students about institutionalized racism or sexism?” White said.

    Ultimately, Trapani believes the amended syllabi policy is an attempt to insulate the Board of Governors from public criticism.

    “Florida will make a lot more sense to outsiders if its policymaking is viewed through a lens of fear,” he said. “They’ve deputized an army of outsiders to pore through records older than most students’ time at the university—all so that they cannot be accused of missing something … It’s just another way in which faculty employment conditions and physical safety are made more precarious by the endless barrage of false claims about our teaching practices.”

    Josh Moody contributed to this report.

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  • Tense board relationships fuel high superintendent turnover

    Tense board relationships fuel high superintendent turnover

    Since the COVID-19 pandemic, high superintendent turnover rates have not let up — and that’s not surprising, said Wendy Birhanzel, a district leader in Colorado. 

    Nearly a quarter (23%) of the 500 largest districts experienced a change in their superintendency between July 1, 2024 and July 1, 2025, according to a September report by ILO Group, a national education strategy and policy firm. This turnover is up from last year’s survey results showing a 20% rate and a notable uptick from pre-pandemic averages ranging from 14% to 16%, ILO Group found.

    The job of a superintendent “became a very different role” after COVID-19 shuttered school buildings nationwide in March 2020, said Birhanzel, who is in her seventh year as superintendent at Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Education is very politicized right now, and can be a little tricky to navigate from all the different sides of everyone in their opinions.”

    Birhanzel said she mentors superintendents in Colorado and throughout the country, and she finds many saying they are “overwhelmed by the constant pressure” from their school boards, students’ families or school staff who are unhappy with the district. 

    While it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of high superintendent turnover nationwide, one underlying reason may be the “real tension” that’s emerged in communities since the pandemic, said Julia Rafal-Baer, CEO of ILO Group and Women Leading Ed, a national network for women education leaders. 

    From controversial COVID-19 policies to rules on screens and devices and growing district enrollment and financial challenges, she said, things have “come to a head” and landed on district leaders. 

    Moreover, the superintendency is one of the most influential roles in K-12 as it directly impacts high-level strategy as well as the teacher workforce and their working conditions, Rafal-Baer said. 

    “And yet we are paying less attention to the fact that the churn [in the superintendency] that we thought would be temporary is our new normal, and it’s straining our districts when students need that kind of steady, effective leadership,” she said.

    Many districts typically outline a five-year strategic plan with set missions and goals that then acts as a blueprint for the system’s needs, said Dennis Willingham,  superintendent at Walker County School District in Jasper, Alabama. 

    Superintendent turnover is concerning because that means district leaders are likely not staying long enough to execute those five-year strategies effectively, he said. 

    Then when a new superintendent steps into the role, they may want to take the district into a totally different direction, Willingham said, which can be discouraging and confusing to school communities. 

    Birhanzel also noted that superintendent turnover can lead to “a domino effect” with more district turnover in other roles like administrators, principals, teachers and even bus drivers. “It goes deeper than just one position,” she said. 

    Despite the high turnover, just one-third of superintendent roles are held by women, according to ILO Group data. Even with year-over-year improvement, parity between men and women won’t be reached until 2054 if the current pace continues, the firm said.  

    What can be done?

    Willingham and Birhanzel agreed that much of the pressure put on superintendents stems from disagreements or tension with their school boards. While both superintendents reported good relationships with their boards, they said they recognized that the positive dynamic they experience can be rare. 

    Pressure from strained school board relationships “takes away the focus” from the school system and “also the joy of being a superintendent,” Willingham said.

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