(WIB) – School boards decide what kids get taught, how money is spent, and who gets hired to run a district. But a majority of the board members making those decisions don’t look like Black America.

Indeed, a new study from The Thomas Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank, finds the share of Black Americans who sit on their local school board has been cut in half, dropping from 8% in 2001 to 4% in 2023. Meanwhile, the proportion of white Americans, long the majority of school board members, remains virtually unchanged — going from 86% to 87% in the same time span.

That disparity isn’t just about optics. This study comes as school boards across the country are being put in the national spotlight over hot-button issues such as votes on Critical Race Theory and book bans.

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