Who Actually Runs Your School Board? What It Controls and What It Doesn't

Most Americans have never met anyone who serves on a school board, could not name a single member of their own, and have no idea what the job involves. Yet school boards in Pennsylvania vote on school taxes, typically the largest part of a PA property tax bill, hire the person who runs a multi-million-dollar organization for them, and oversee what is taught to their children in school.

School board members are elected in odd-numbered years, when municipal officers and judges are chosen and congressional representatives, senators, governors, and presidents are not on the ballot. As a result, most people don't even vote for school boards. Even in November 2025, when Allegheny County saw an unusually energized off-year electorate, only around 44 percent of registered voters turned out, well above the previous three municipal elections, which had topped out near 32 percent. In a typical municipal year, roughly two out of three registered voters stay home. The people who do show up, disproportionately older and more civically engaged, choose the nine people who will govern their school district for the next four years. A few hundred votes routinely decide these seats.

School directors serve without compensation. Boards in the greater Pittsburgh region all have nine members on staggered four-year terms, five seats up in one municipal election, four in the next. The next school board elections are in 2027, with primaries in May and the general election in November, on the same ballot as county offices and judicial races. If you're not sure what school district you're in, it's on your tax bill.

State law governs Pennsylvania school boards, not local charters. Unlike municipalities, which can adopt home rule charters and vary enormously in structure, school districts can't rewrite their own rules. Your school board hires, evaluates, and fires the superintendent, a decision that shapes every other one; a school board doesn't run a school, it chooses and holds accountable the person who does. It adopts the annual budget and sets the property tax millage, within a cap set by the Act 1 index described below. It adopts curriculum, textbooks, and instructional materials, since what is taught, and from which books, is a board vote. It sets district policy on discipline, attendance, student records, parental notification, technology, and athletics. It approves collective bargaining agreements and personnel actions, authorizes capital projects and issues debt for buildings, renovations, closures, and consolidations, and rules on brick-and-mortar charter school applications within district boundaries. It sets the school calendar and any graduation requirements above the state minimum, and it must meet in public and answer Right-to-Know requests.

A great deal of what shows up on your school tax bill, though, is set in Harrisburg, not by the nine people whose names you can vote for or against. Every school district contributes to the PA Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS) at a rate certified by the PSERS Board of Trustees, not by your local school board. For fiscal year 2026-2027, that rate is 33.59 percent of payroll (32.52 percent pension, 0.56 percent health insurance premium assistance, 0.51 percent Act 5 defined contribution), a slight decrease from 34 percent in 2025-2026. For every dollar a district pays a teacher, it owes roughly thirty-four cents more to the retirement system, under a formula set by law and calculated by a state-hired actuary.

When a student in a district enrolls in one of Pennsylvania's cyber charter schools, that district must pay the tuition under a formula set in state law. Until the 2025-26 state budget, districts paid cyber charters the same per-student rate as brick-and-mortar charters, which many districts objected to; lawmakers changed the formula, and the cyber charter sector disputes the districts' framing of the old formula. The point isn't who was right, it's that a line item large enough to swing one district's budget by eight figures was changed by the legislature, not by your school board.

School boards set taxes, but state law constrains how much they can raise them. Under the Taxpayer Relief Act (Special Session Act 1 of 2006), a district may raise taxes up to a cap defined by a state-defined index without asking voters. Above that, it must either win a referendum or obtain one of four exceptions from the Department of Education: special education, school construction debt, retirement contributions, and certain other debt. The index is based on wage growth, on the idea that schools shouldn't raise taxes faster than paychecks rise; it also accounts for the fact that poorer areas may need to raise taxes more to fund the basics, though it's a cap, not a floor. Every district's specific index is published by the Department of Education. The state Auditor General has criticized the four exceptions as a loophole allowing repeated above-index increases without voter approval, but school district associations reject that characterization. Both positions are defensible on the same facts, and knowing the mechanism exists is what lets you judge for yourself.

Four other things are entirely outside your board's control. Congress wrote the special education mandates in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and your district must meet them regardless of cost. The PA General Assembly wrote the tenure and furlough rules governing when a district may dismiss a teacher, and it writes the funding formula that determines how much state money your district gets each year. The State Board of Education adopts the academic standards defining what schools must teach. And the PA Department of Education runs the tests measuring whether schools met those standards.

A few regional exceptions are worth knowing. Pittsburgh is structurally different: Pittsburgh Public Schools is Pennsylvania's only First Class A district, meaning its school board plays by different rules than everywhere else in the region. It still has nine members, but they're elected by sub-district rather than at large, so a Pittsburgh voter votes for one director, not nine. State law also permits the Pittsburgh board to be resized to any odd number from seven to fifteen, under an apportionment plan the voters approved and that can't be resized afterward.

Some boards have had their powers taken away. Under Act 141 of 2012, the PA Department of Education can place a district in "financial watch" or declare it in "financial recovery." Financial watch is a warning, not a takeover: the Education Department identifies a district showing signs of trouble and provides technical assistance, which can include hiring a financial consultant with the express purpose of keeping the district out of recovery, and the school board keeps all of its powers. In recovery, the Education Secretary appoints a Chief Recovery Officer (CRO), who writes a recovery plan. If the board rejects the plan or defies the CRO's directives, the Secretary can petition the county Court of Common Pleas to install a receiver, at which point all duties of the CRO and the school board transfer to the receiver except the ability to levy taxes. A receivership expires three years after appointment unless extended; when a district exits recovery, the board resumes full control. No more than nine districts statewide may be in recovery status at once. Currently, two districts in our region are in financial recovery, Duquesne City and Sto-Rox, and two are in financial watch, Wilkinsburg Borough and Aliquippa. Duquesne City operates under a court-appointed receiver. In these districts, voters still elect a board, but the state has taken over much of what that board would normally do.

Career-technical centers and intermediate units, meanwhile, aren't directly elected at all. Regional career and technical centers and intermediate units are governed by joint committees appointed by member district boards, and these committees create and oversee budgets even though no voter casts a direct ballot for them.

A few things are worth knowing before you cast your vote. Pennsylvania permits school board candidates to seek nomination on both the Democratic and Republican primary ballots simultaneously, called "cross-filing." A candidate who wins both primaries faces no opposition in November, which means the primary is often the real election, and the letter next to a name in the fall may indicate nothing about the candidate's actual views or registration. If you vote only in November, you may have already missed the school board election, since odd-year primaries are held in May.

Some directors are appointed, not elected. When a seat opens between elections, the remaining board members fill it by majority vote within 30 days. If they deadlock, ten or more resident taxpayers may petition the Court of Common Pleas to make the appointment. The appointee serves until the first Monday of December following the next municipal election occurring more than 60 days after the vacancy. That procedure governs every district in the five counties except Pittsburgh, where the Mayor fills a vacancy from the same sub-district.