Most California School Board Races Go Uncontested Despite Pay Raises — Fresno Voters Among Those With Limited Choices
Most California voters won’t be able to vote for their local school board this year, even after state lawmakers passed legislation allowing districts to raise trustee pay for the first time in more than 40 years. An analysis of 2,225 current races across 52 counties found that 62% are not on the ballot — either because no one is running for the seat or because a single candidate is running unopposed.
That means 1,207 seats have a single candidate running unopposed, making that person an instant winner, while 224 seats have no candidates running at all. This is nearly identical to 2024, when 56.4% of races in 49 counties analyzed went uncontested.
Assemblymember Jose Luis Solache Jr., D-Paramount, who authored the bill increasing the maximum school trustees can be paid, said it is too soon to tell if the legislation will mean more school board candidates. “Whatever the case, raising the pay maximum was long overdue,” he said. Legislators hadn’t raised the amount trustees can be paid for more than 40 years.
Since California increased the amount school trustees can be paid 10 months ago, dozens of school boards have voted to increase their pay — some by as much as 500%. Elk Grove Unified trustees raised their monthly stipends from $750 to $4,500. Beverly Hills Unified, Oceanside Unified, Carlsbad Unified, Escondido Union School District, and Antioch Unified all increased trustee pay by 400%.
In districts that raised pay the most, candidate numbers did improve slightly. Elk Grove has seven candidates running for three seats this year, compared to eight running for four seats in 2024. Antioch has three candidates for one seat, compared to five running for three seats in 2024. The most competitive race is in Chula Vista Elementary School District, which increased pay 300% from $750 a month to $3,000 — it has 12 candidates vying for three seats, compared to seven candidates for three seats in 2024.
But most of the 50 school districts with the highest numbers of vacant or uncontested races are in rural areas that have struggled for years to attract candidates. Lassen County has the highest share of races with no candidates at 72.73%, followed by Siskiyou at 63.64%.
“Since the Covid pandemic there has been a lot of frustration directed at some school boards,” said Allan Carver, Siskiyou County superintendent of schools. “Why would a person want to join that board and get beat up?”
When no one runs for a board seat, school boards can either appoint a trustee or hold a special election. Most boards opt to appoint a trustee to avoid costly special elections. Finding the appointee can be difficult. Carver said he has called people he worked with in education to encourage them to join boards, while Scott Borba, executive director of the Small School Districts’ Association, contacted parents personally when he was superintendent of Le Grand Union Elementary School District in Merced County.
In Siskiyou County, Carver expects the 45 board races with no candidate filed to drop to about 10 by January. “No one filed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that nobody’s interested in the position,” he said. Often incumbents don’t see the point of turning in election paperwork when no one is running against them. “It’s just easier for them to show right back up at the next December board meeting and be appointed onto the board and keep going.”
A recent report from the “Getting Down to Facts” research project warns that uncontested races could weaken democratic representation and community engagement by limiting voters’ opportunities to influence the makeup of their local school boards. About half of the 801 school board members surveyed by researchers were uncertain whether they would run for another term.
“A lot of it, too, is around the kind of emotional toll of being in the community and knowing a lot of the people that are coming at you with some of these challenges and criticisms and dissatisfactions,” said Beth Schueler, an associate professor of education at Stanford University and a co-author of the report.
The report found that roughly half of the board members surveyed spent less than $100 on their last board election, and only 6% spent $25,000 or more. “I think more people might be willing to run if they realize how frequently these offices were uncontested, and the limited amount of funding it takes to run a campaign,” Schueler said.
Ed Manansala, El Dorado County superintendent of schools, said people don’t run because they often don’t understand the role or feel prepared for it and don’t think they will be supported. To encourage candidates, the El Dorado County Office of Education holds workshops once or twice a year to demystify the position, offering an overview of trustees’ role and responsibilities, governance basics, and how and when to file election paperwork.
“The school board is one of the most direct forms of local democracy we have,” Manansala said. “And I think that what I have observed is individuals want to be engaged, and we’re tending to see people looking to the school boards to be able to do that. With that said, it isn’t as if I’m seeing hundreds of people lining up at the door for the roles.”
The Breakdown
- 62% of California school board races (1,431 of 2,225 analyzed) are not on the ballot this year — either no one is running or only one candidate filed, making them an instant winner with no voter choice.
- This is nearly identical to 2024, when 56.4% of races went uncontested.
- A state law passed 10 months ago allowed school boards to raise trustee pay for the first time in more than 40 years. Dozens of districts increased pay — some by 400% or 500%.
- Districts with the largest pay increases saw modest candidate improvements, but the overall shortage persists, especially in rural counties.
- When no candidate files, school boards typically appoint someone rather than hold a costly special election.
What This Means for You
If your local school board race isn’t on the ballot this November, you won’t get to vote on who oversees your child’s school district budget, curriculum, facilities, and superintendent. Instead, the board will appoint someone — likely without public input beyond the board meeting where the appointment happens. School boards oversee district budgets, curriculum, facilities and superintendents, but this pattern means those decisions are increasingly made by people voters never chose. When you do have a contested race on your ballot, that vote carries unusual weight — it’s one of the few chances you’ll have to actually influence who runs your local schools.
What to Watch
The pay raises were supposed to solve this problem, and they didn’t — which raises the question of what actually would. Districts raising pay the most saw some improvement, but not enough to reverse the trend, and the pattern in rural districts is unchanged. The real cost here isn’t the money — candidates themselves report spending almost nothing to run — it’s the “emotional toll” one researcher describes, the frustration and criticism school board members absorb from their own neighbors. That suggests the shortage is less about compensation than about whether anyone wants to take on a job where you’re publicly accountable for decisions half the room will hate you for, no matter what you choose.
The researchers’ point is worth sitting with: voters might actually run if they realized how often these seats go uncontested and how little it costs to mount a campaign. That’s a gap between what’s possible and what people think is possible — a voter who assumes the seat is out of reach might never file, even when no one else does either. If the state is serious about competitive school board races, the question is whether making it easier to run (lower filing barriers, clearer role descriptions, public candidate workshops like El Dorado County’s) would do more than raising the pay did.
Finally, the pattern of incumbents not filing and just showing up to be reappointed — a practice one county superintendent describes as “just kind of how it’s evolved over time” — is a real accountability gap. An appointee who never faced a voter has never had to make a case for why they deserve the seat, and a voter who wanted to challenge them never got the chance. Whether that practice is “the best way,” as the superintendent acknowledges it’s not, is a question voters should be asking when it happens in their own district.
