Minnesota teachers’ unions have a long tradition of being involved in school board races, from campaign planning and marketing to candidate endorsements. Their influence on these elections has largely gone unchallenged until a couple of years ago, when the Minnesota Parents Alliance was formed as a parent-focused, parent-powered organization that not only supports parent candidates aligned with their mission but recommends candidates across the state with its own endorsements.
How are these endorsements, teacher union versus parent group, received by Minnesotans?
According to an August 2024 survey conducted by the Morris Leatherman Company on behalf of the Minnesota School Boards Association, more Minnesotans overall say they are most likely to trust endorsements from parents’ groups over teachers’ unions — 49 percent to 42 percent. Minnesota parents are even more likely to say they trust parent group endorsements versus teachers’ union endorsements — 52 percent to 41 percent. Those in the metro area are slightly more trustworthy of union endorsements, 47 percent, compared to parent group endorsements trusted by 45 percent of metro area respondents.
Union involvement in school board elections creates quite the cycle for teachers’ unions, as Jarrett Skorup with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy explains:
1) Government unions fund and campaign for school board members and other politicians; 2) those same politicians then support generous pay and benefits, and force people to pay dues and fees to unions, ensuring that 3) a portion of the money is routed back to the public employee union to start the cycle again.
This isn’t to say that union supporters shouldn’t have a seat at the school board table, as there are First Amendment implications of right of expression and right of association at work, but it is important for the general public to be aware of the relationship between teacher union electioneering and labor-friendly deals at the taxpayers’ expense.
School board members can, and often do, face pressure “to satisfy the preferences of groups (like teachers’ unions) that remain among the most organized and active players in district politics,” writes Michael Hartney of Boston College. “…[E]lected boards provide unions with another, often less competitive, political arena for them to shape education policy.”
As a growing body of research shows, “the dominance of teachers’ unions in school board elections challenge[s] pluralist characterizations of school board politics,” according to Hartney and his analysis on the topic. “…[U]nion-endorsed candidates are not more likely to win school board elections simply because they are stronger candidates ex ante but rather because union support confers an advantage that makes endorsed candidates more formidable on Election Day.”
At least according to this one survey, not all Minnesota voters are convinced union-endorsed candidates are the way to go. We will see how that plays out in less than four weeks.