The Power of Local Elections: Make Your Vote Count

In this episode of The Pulling Curls Podcast: Pregnancy & Parenting Untangled, Hilary Erickson chats with Margaret Wright, vice president of a local school board, about the significance of minor elections. They delve into the challenges and rewards of serving on the school board, the intricacies of local elections, and the importance of researching and voting for these often overlooked positions that have a major impact on daily life. Tune in to discover how you can become a more educated voter and make informed decisions in your community.

Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts

Today’s guest is Margaret Wright who is one of my best friends and also vice president of our local school board

Timestamps:

00:00 Personal challenges of public speaking and campaign logistics.
06:34 Attend local forums to learn about candidates.
07:54 Local micro newspapers crucial for community information.
12:25 “Local elections matter; research and vote!”

Keypoints:

• Hilary Erickson introduces the episode’s focus on the importance of voting in smaller elections, especially school boards.
• Margaret Wright, Vice President of the local school board and Hilary’s friend, is the guest speaker.
• Margaret explains her initial motivations for running for the school board, including wanting to serve the community and having free time.
• Discussing the challenges of running for school board, Margaret cites public speaking and understanding election laws as the most difficult aspects.
• Margaret shares her experience of campaigning during COVID-19, noting the increased complexity and reliance on virtual communication.
• Tips for researching smaller elections include checking local Facebook groups, attending candidate forums, and reading micro newspapers.
• Hilary and Margaret discuss the surprisingly partisan nature of school board elections despite their theoretical nonpartisanship.
• The significant impact of school board decisions on daily life, such as hiring superintendents and setting school calendars, is highlighted.
• Encouraging listener participation in voting, the speakers stress the importance of being informed about all election candidates, no matter how small.
• The episode concludes with Host Hilary Erickson thanking Margaret for her service and previewing upcoming podcast topics, including plus-size pregnancies.

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00.390] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 245, we are talking about voting. And no, I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, but we’re going to talk about those tiny elections that somehow we rationalize don’t really matter. Let’s untangle it.

[00:00:16.070] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the Pregnancy Nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled: The Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:42.940] – Hilary Erickson

I want to introduce today’s guest. She is actually the vice President of my local school board and one of my very best friends, Margaret Wright. Hey, Margaret. Welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:53.410] – Margaret Wright

Hi, Hilary.

[00:00:54.610] – Hilary Erickson

So excited to have my friend and school board member on for how many more months- how many months do we have left?

[00:01:00.420] – Margaret Wright

Let’s see. I have October, November, just three. Just three months left, about four meetings.

[00:01:06.890] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. And a school board term is three years?

[00:01:10.270] – Margaret Wright

Four years.

[00:01:11.140] – Hilary Erickson

Four long years.

[00:01:12.820] – Margaret Wright

Yeah. Four years. Just like the President.

[00:01:14.990] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, just like him. Okay, so what made you decide to run for school board in the first place?

[00:01:20.130] – Margaret Wright

It was a combination of several things. I had a friend who was serving on the school board, and then I had some other friends ask me if I would be interested in serving. And then I also just found myself at a time in my life where I had some unexpected free time, and I didn’t want to find full-time employment.

[00:01:45.590] – Margaret Wright

And I just thought I would like to continue to find a way to serve my community. And I had been heavily involved in PTO and doing service in that capacity to be involved with my children’s schools. But I got to a point where I felt like I had done what there was to do in that department and was looking for something else.

[00:02:05.300] – Margaret Wright

So it was just really good timing for me to find something that would be interesting to me. I’ve always cared about education and cared about the schools where my children were attending. So it was just a good extension. Just really good timing.

[00:02:17.860] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. And I’m so impressed. I have three friends who are school board members, and so impressive all the work that you do. Do you get paid for being on the school board?

[00:02:27.690] – Margaret Wright

No. This one is all volunteer.

[00:02:31.130] – Hilary Erickson

Magical.

[00:02:31.920] – Margaret Wright

Yeah. Yeah. Some politicians get paid, but this position, although elected, is unpaid.

[00:02:38.350] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. Well, good job by you. Okay, so what was the worst part of running for school board?

[00:02:43.840] – Margaret Wright

Okay, so I knew this question was coming and I was thinking about the things that were hard for me. I don’t know that they necessarily would be hard for everyone. They were most difficult for me because it was just hard for me to put myself out there and to just start up conversations with strangers and attend things like candidate forums where I am doing some public speaking and trying to negotiate my own thoughts and speak about what I want to do. I think those are intimidating environments for me, so I definitely had to push myself in that scenario.

[00:03:20.250] – Margaret Wright

Then the second hardest thing was just figuring out the logistics and the rules of how to actually run for a public office. There are laws of course, associated with elections for good reason, but they’re not super intuitive or easy to navigate. So figuring out how to run the finances for a campaign and just making sure I had all my boxes checked. That was just a jump in the deep end and see if you can figure it out.

[00:03:49.180] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. Like, how difficult would you say the laws were surrounding it? Also, you were running during COVID.

[00:03:57.700] – Margaret Wright

I was, yeah. 2020 was when I- I decided I would run in February, and then everything went crazy in March. But I had already said I wanted to run. So a lot of things got interrupted, and it was messy, and there was a lot of emails and phone calls since I couldn’t go to the election office and ask all my questions in person.

[00:04:18.930] – Margaret Wright

They would have Zoom trainings for you. It’s the county that runs elections. So depending on your county, they can be either super helpful or not. But ours was pretty helpful. They people to run for these positions. Obviously, there are a lot of places that there’s not even a competition. They’re begging people to please be on the school board. So it wasn’t super complicated, but it took some time to make sure that I was running things how it needed to be run.

[00:04:46.520] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. I will say we have a friend who is running for the high school board, and because there were only enough people to fill the slots necessary, she actually won’t end up being on the ballot.

[00:04:55.870] – Margaret Wright

I know. I was a little jealous. When I heard that. I thought, Oh, that’s completely unfair because you don’t even have to make signs or distribute them. It just felt lucky, lucky for them. But in the end, it’s still hard work either way. You sign up for four years of something that you don’t already know how to do. So you just have to be willing to learn.

[00:05:20.770] – Hilary Erickson

So how do you research these smaller elections? Because school boards probably… Is that the smallest election on the ballot? I think it probably is, right? Especially for us, because we actually a high school board, and we have an elementary school board because we have separate school districts. So I think trying to figure out how these small… How to vote for it is tricky, because all I see are Kamala Harris and Trump ads on TV. I don’t ever see… Nobody’s taking out an ad to tell why they’re going to be a great school board member. No.

[00:05:49.370] – Margaret Wright

Too much money. No, they sure weren’t. Too much money. That’s right. So I think that at least the way the election ran where we are, Facebook was a pretty knowledgeable source as far as understanding what candidates were out there locally. So if you were in your PTO page or even different organizations in the community that care about education, will post things about smaller elections and the people that are running.

[00:06:17.290] – Margaret Wright

We had some local candidate forums that were put on by similar education associations or organizations that care about schools and want people to be able to have access to the information of who’s running for the board and challenges that the school board is going to be facing. We had candidate forums again, like I said. Those candidate forums are super helpful. So if you can find a local forum, either ours ended up being online but in person, I’d say that’s the best way to find out who’s running for school board and how they feel about different issues that are going to be coming up.

[00:06:51.880] – Margaret Wright

So yeah, Facebook, websites, candidates probably will have their own website that will introduce themselves and help you get to know them. I was trying to think ways that we get to know our city council members that are running, and I think it’s pretty similar. They had forums. I remember getting invited to a forum or just a meet and greet or just go to the meetings themselves is a great way to meet whoever is already on the board.

[00:07:18.600] – Margaret Wright

I think reaching out to people who are on the board and asking them how they feel about the candidates who are coming or running is a really great way because a lot of times they will have had conversations with people that are running because you don’t to do it. So who do you ask? You ask the people who are already on the board. So I’ve had several conversations with candidates that are currently running right now.

[00:07:38.360] – Margaret Wright

So I’ve had people reach out and ask me, what do you think about so and so and so and so and so? And where would you like to see this board go? Because I’m invested. So reaching out to people who are already on it, I think, is a really good way of finding out who’s running and what’s going on.

[00:07:54.170] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. I was always surprised by, we have very tiny micro newspapers that are in our area, and they a lot of times would cover the forums, which I had never noticed until Margaret ran. And then I was like, Oh, they are a great option for city council, school board. I got to say, 2020 really reminded us. Suddenly, I was watching the school board meetings to be like, When are we going back to school? What the city council and what the school board was doing was way more important to me personally than what Washington was doing because it really affected my day-to-day with kids.

[00:08:26.470] – Margaret Wright

Yeah, I think we saw that.

[00:08:28.270] – Hilary Erickson

People just ignore-

[00:08:28.760] – Margaret Wright

We saw that nationwide.

[00:08:29.860] – Hilary Erickson

People just ignore those tiny elections. And so, yeah, it’s tricky. I love to go to their websites. I will say that I was also super surprised to find out how partisan school board elections were because you’re not named as a Republican or Democrat candidate on the ballot, but you said that it was still very- Yeah.

[00:08:47.370] – Margaret Wright

Theoretically, it’s non-partisan, although local political groups know exactly who are members of their own political party. So it does end up getting a little bit partisan, But there are a lot of candidates that are independent, too, and they’re not going to have a party throwing their name out there. So you’ve got to look around to see about the ones that aren’t necessarily tied to a political party.

[00:09:14.120] – Hilary Erickson

It’s tricky, but guys, you got to get out and vote, right? For sure. And find out about these tiny elections. Don’t just look at the big ones, because ultimately they may affect you even more. That’s always what I want to say on this podcast. Don’t just ignore, because I hear a lot of people are like, Oh, I have no idea for my city elections or even my state.

[00:09:30.280] – Hilary Erickson

And I’m like, guys, guess who’s going to decide abortion for all of us? It’s not Donald Trump. It ends up being the people in our state. So, yeah. Thank you for running, because I know it was not a piece of cake being on the school board or running for school board, or… Yeah, but it’s almost done.

[00:09:48.220] – Margaret Wright

Yeah. Anyone who wants to be on a school board automatically has my respect, regardless of their political opinions. I just have a lot of respect for people who want to serve, and they’ll always get kudos from me.

[00:10:03.250] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, because it’s a big job. I will say, guys, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that you never see. I think prior to this, I mostly saw them come in and read or come to a school activity, and that was about it.

[00:10:15.100] – Margaret Wright

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we had a new superintendent get employed and come on board. And it’s those school board members that hire that superintendent, which then sets the tone for the entire leadership of your district and where you want it to go and what you want it to focus on. So there’s actually a lot more power than I realized that sits on a school board and affects everyone’s daily lives. We completely changed the break calendar, I’m sure you noticed.

[00:10:44.390] – Hilary Erickson

We love it. We love the changes.

[00:10:45.830] – Margaret Wright

And the school board votes on that. There’s five people that say yes or no as to whether or not you have a six-week summer or an eight-week summer. And that’s a big deal for families.

[00:10:55.400] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. Get out and vote, guys. It’s coming up. Please get out and vote. Look I always email Margaret like, What are you thinking about the candidates? Because sometimes she has insider information. I love to look on their websites. I love to read the forums. I don’t love it. I’m not going to lie to you guys. I don’t love it. I don’t enjoy researching candidates, but it’s… Oh, for real. It’s a necessary adult task.

[00:11:17.080] – Margaret Wright

If you’re in a community that you can’t find any information on the candidates, then I highly suggest that you host your own forum, especially when it comes to school board candidates, because they just play such a big role in your life.

[00:11:32.240] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. And a lot of them are just at people’s houses. Yeah.

[00:11:35.250] – Margaret Wright

Oh, yeah. Super informal. I’m not talking about major debate and moderated and back and forth. No, just a meet and greet. Allow you to ask a person What do you even do on the school board? What are you even in charge of? Because I think the normal person that was me before 2020 could not have told you a single thing about what a school board member does. Like, Oh, they’re there and they get elected. But that’s about all I could have said. Whereas now, I could tell all about our responsibilities.

[00:12:02.030] – Hilary Erickson

It’s going to be a happy day when you don’t have them, though, right?

[00:12:04.410] – Margaret Wright

Yeah. It’s been a great season of my life, and one thing that I’ll always be grateful that I did.

[00:12:12.730] – Hilary Erickson

And it is. And now it will be history in Margaret’s life.

[00:12:15.750] – Margaret Wright

It’s coming up.

[00:12:16.660] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks for coming on, Margaret. Thanks for being a stellar school board member, and everybody go out and vote.

[00:12:22.940] – Margaret Wright

Yeah, please vote. You’re so welcome. Thanks for having me.

[00:12:25.820] – Hilary Erickson

I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. I mostly just want to remind us that these tiny elections still matter. They matter a whole lot. It’s been an eye opener watching what Margaret does and how parents contact her and the changes that she is able to make in the school district. And it’s reminded me how important it is to research these smaller candidates. And make a good choice for ourselves in those areas just as much, if not more, than the presidential election. So please get out the vote. It’s so important.

[00:12:54.750] – Hilary Erickson

Stay tuned. Next week, we’re talking about plus-size pregnancies. And the week after that, I’m reviewing my appendicitis. So obviously, there’s some good things to look forward to.

[00:13:04.120] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you liked today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.

Keywords:

voting, tiny elections, local elections, school board, running for school board, school board election process, community service, parent involvement, PTO, election laws, campaign finances, public office, COVID-19 impact, candidate forums, local forums, city council, researching candidates, nonpartisan elections, local political groups, partisan politics, local micro newspapers, city council elections, state elections, Washington politics, impact of local elections, school calendar changes, superintendent hiring, school district leadership, school board responsibilities, importance of voting.