2023 School Board Candidate School Board:
Our Process
MoEEP started with the goal of researching and scoring every single school board candidate in the state of Missouri up for election on April 4. As a small group of volunteers, we settled instead on a smaller group of districts. For the purpose of transparency, we want to lay out the process we followed, along with the points at which we narrowed our scope to the districts that are presented and how those decisions were made.
Preparing for the scorecard
In the last week of December, 2022, we began by sending emails to each of the more than 500 school districts in the state of Missouri, asking them for the names of their candidates, as well as some basic information about the election, such as the number of seats.
Many replied, and many did not.
The first decision made was an obvious one: if there was no election, we would remove the district from our list. We also did not worry about districts that did not respond at the moment. As a group of volunteers, we’ve learned to guard our time carefully and choosing not to chase hundreds of districts was important for that.
At the same time as the team was working to email districts and collect candidate names, we were working on writing the survey and determining how to score them. We determined the following:
Candidates would not need to complete the survey for us to research them and assign a score
Candidates would not need to agree with us on every point to receive an Endorsement or a Pro-Equity score, nor would they need to disagree with us on every point to be marked Anti-Equity
Candidates would not need to participate to receive a Pro-Equity score, but would need to participate to receive an Endorsement, however candidates could participate and be scored as Pro-Equity without getting an Endorsement
All candidates would be scored by at least two members of the team, and often by a third or even a fourth
No single member would have the final say in a score, rather scores would be the consensus decision by the members who graded the candidate
We would not wait until every candidate was scored to release grades, but instead would release grades as soon as we completed all of the candidates in a district
Reaching out to candidates and collecting information
In the middle of January, we began a two prong process.
Prong 1: Research candidates and collect links and notes in one place
Prong 2: Reach out to candidates
Prong 1 involved members of the team digging into district websites, social media postings, Google search results, and collecting that information in an organized system so we could use it later.
Prong 2 involved sending out hundreds of emails to candidates. Our goal was to make a few things clear in the email. First, that it was optional. Second, that we would be grading candidates regardless of their participation. Third, the benefits of being endorsed by MoEEP. And fourth, a deadline for completion. For complete transparency, here is a screenshot of the email that we sent.
Additionally, we gave more information in the introduction to the survey itself:
Grading and explaining - our next decision points reached
Survey responses started to come in and our team set out to score the candidates. We soon came to the realization that we would not be able to score every candidate in the state while maintaining the integrity of the system. Without hesitation, we chose our integrity and made the decision to focus on districts that fell into one of the following categories:
Districts where at least one candidate completed a survey
Districts in the top 20 in the state by size
Districts where equity issues had become a significant issue recently
Districts where we have received requests for information
The last point has required us to continue reaching out to candidates, even into the middle of March, to make sure our members and the public have access to the kind of information they need to make their decisions.
Our other key decision at this stage came when we were faced with a district with an abundance of great candidates. In fact, we wanted to endorse more candidates than seats. After a week of difficult conversation, we determined that we could only endorse three of the four candidates we wanted to endorse. We changed the fourth to Pro-Equity. While we felt that any of the four would be great board members, we did not feel comfortable recommending four candidates for only three seats.
A quick explanation of the grades we assigned
These are the explanations taken directly from the FAQ section of the Equity Scorecard:
What’s the outcome?
At the time of this writing, that’s up to you. But, by the numbers…
We’ve given our Endorsement to more than 45 candidates in more than 30 districts across the state.
We’ve given our Pro-Equity score to nearly the same number of candidates
We’ve given our Anti-Equity score to more than 35 candidates in more than 20 districts
We been forced to give our Unclear: Ask! score to more than 150 candidates in more than 45 districts statewide
Overall, we’ve scored nearly 300 candidates in more than 50 districts, from Hannibal to Springfield and from St. Joseph to Fox.