Changing the format of school board meetings may boost trust and engagement, especially among low-income groups and people of color, research finds.

Schools in the United States are set to receive $123 billion in federal pandemic relief funding. Across the country, parents and school administrators are debating whether to teach critical race theory. And Americans are bitterly divided in their opinions about how and when to resume in-person instruction following rising rates of vaccination against COVID-19.

Given these topics, you might expect that school board meetings across the US would be hotbeds of discussion. But in many cases, they’re staid, sparsely attended affairs.

“We have more than 13,000 school boards in the US, and each one of them meets monthly,” says Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of education at Brown University. “Everyone hates these things. People have told me they think going to school board meetings is like watching paint dry, like listening to nails on a chalkboard.”

But after observing school board meetings in Southern California, Collins noticed not all of them were dull. Unlike many of its neighbors, the Burbank Unified School District’s board didn’t just solicit public comments—it also responded to them, he says, eliciting two-way conversation.

Collins wondered: Could encouraging dialogue between citizens and their elected officials boost meeting attendance? The answer, according to his latest study, might be yes.

Read the full article about school board meetings by Jill Kimball at Futurity.