What can a school board election tell us about American democracy?
Well, if that school board race happens to be in Jefferson County, involve the nation’s largest teachers union and one of the country’s most influential conservative nonprofit groups … quite a bit, actually.
At least that’s the premise of a new documentary short film, “Million-Dollar School Board” by independent filmmakers Louis Alvarez, Andy Kolker and Paul Stekler.
The film chronicles the high-profile school board race — which included debates about how history should be taught and how teachers should get paid — that ended with three conservative members being ousted by a coalition of teachers, parents and community members. More than $1 million was poured into the campaign from all sides, hence the film’s title.
The Jeffco film is part of a nine-part series of short documentaries, “Postcards from The Great Divide,” released in a digital partnership between PBS’ Election 2016 initiative and The Washington Post, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Latino Public Broadcasting, with a PBS broadcast on the World Channel.
The goal is to answer this question:
As substantial interest group money flows down into even local races, does it also bring the same stark ideological and partisan divisions that mark our national politics today into debates that were once totally separate from Washington?
You can view the roughly 12-minute film in its entirety here:
Then reread a sampling of our coverage:
- Why the tug-of-war for Jefferson County’s school board isn’t just about local classrooms
- In Jefferson County, volunteers race to reach uninformed voters to sway in school board recall
- Nine claims made in the Jefferson County school board recall explained
- Jeffco school board members who pushed controversial changes ousted in recall
- Teachers unions gave huge sums of seed money to Jeffco recall