By: Susan Tebben – March 4, 2025
A bill just introduced in the Ohio Senate would create partisan elections for candidates in State Board of Education and local school district board of education races.
Ohio Senate Bill 107, introduced by state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, would require candidates in State Board of Education and local school district board of education races, along with races for education service center governing board members, to be required to run in political party primary elections and appear alongside political party affiliations in general elections.
Under current law, education board candidates are on nonpartisan ballots, alongside municipal, county and common pleas court judges. In 2021, Ohio Republican lawmakers added party labels to Ohio Supreme Court races and have won every state supreme court contest since.
Brenner told the Senate General Government Committee in introducing his new bill that the nonpartisan nature of school board elections “may lead people to believe we are keeping politics out of the classroom.”
“However, nonpartisan elections do not mean the candidates running in these races are nonpolitical,” Brenner claimed. “Instead, nonpartisan elections can hide political beliefs from voters, leading to a mismatch between board members and the communities they are meant to represent.”
The bill sponsor said the legislation “is about transparency of candidates.”
“I know that there are people that think that it should remain nonpartisan,” Brenner said. “But if you take a look at all these races, I think all of these races in general are partisan because the people who are running are coming from one political persuasion or another, and I think that adding party labels will help,” Brenner said.
Independent candidates’ qualification will require a nominating petition, with the petition indicating the political party — if any — that will appear on the ballot, according to the language of the bill.
“A candidate may request, at the time of filing, that the candidate be designated on the ballot as a nonparty candidate or as an other-party candidate, or may request that the candidate’s name be placed on the ballot without any designation,” the bill states.
The bill also allows a political party’s central committee to fill a ballot vacancy in the case of a candidate withdrawal, disqualification, or death.
The new bill would change current law with regard to the number of signatures State Board of Education candidates need. To enter primary races, the number of signatures drops from the current requirement of 100 elector signatures down to 50 electors in a given party. Independent candidates would be required to receive signatures equivalent to 1% of the votes received by the governor in the state board district for which the candidate wants to run.
For city school district boards of education, signature requirements are based on the district population in the last federal census count. S.B. 107 would require signatures from 25 electors in the chosen political party in a district with a population of less than 20,000, and 50 for districts with more than 20,000 or more.
Independent candidates for local school boards will also be required to collect 25 signatures in districts where fewer than 5,000 voters participated in the last gubernatorial election, or collect the equivalent of 5% of the vote, whichever is less.
Candidates looking to be on the independent ballot in districts with more than 5,000 voters in the last governor’s race will be required to collect signatures equivalent to 1% of the governor election vote total.
The Ohio School Boards Association is opposed to the bill, as it “continues to oppose any legislation that would transition local school board elections from nonpartisan to partisan or introduce primary elections for these roles,” according to Scott Gerfen, spokesperson for the association.
“Such changes would shrink the pool of qualified candidates willing and able to serve their communities,” Gerfen told the Capital Journal.
Gerfen said regulations like those in S.B. 107 would “unnecessarily restrict” participation in local school board elections for federal and state employees, for example, because they are barred from running for partisan office.
A similar Republican-led bill was introduced in 2023, focusing specifically on state board races. State Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, R-Ashtabula, introduced House Bill 235, which not only sought to add partisan affiliations to state board races, but also endeavored to make the board an all-elected group, instead of the 11 elected positions and eight appointed by the governor.
Fowler Arthur argued that partisanship would give voters “the opportunity to get out and vet their candidates more thoroughly” and give a “more balanced perspective,” likening the potential change to the board of elections candidacy.
The bill didn’t make it out of the Ohio House Primary and Secondary Education Committee in September 2023, and died with the end of the General Assembly term in 2024.
If passed, S.B. 107’s changes would apply 120 after the law takes effect, so if the law is enacted after Jan. 5, 2026, the changes wouldn’t take effect before the May 5 primary election, and elections for school boards would be nonpartisan until 2028.
