It’s Friday, Morris County. This week, we’re going back to school! Book challenges, lawsuits, and packed board meetings have put local school boards in the spotlight. And with BOE candidates on your ballot this fall, now is a good time to find out who’s running in your town. Here’s what you need to know.

School board races can be easy to overlook. They’re placed near the bottom of the ballot, the candidates don’t have party labels, and many voters assume that if they don’t have kids in school, the race has nothing to do with them.

That assumption gets an F. Your local school board oversees one of the biggest public institutions in your community. Board members manage millions of dollars in public spending, hire the superintendent, approve curriculum and textbooks, and make decisions that affect your schools, your taxes, and the strength of your community. Whether you have three kids in the schools or none, you have a stake in who is making those choices. 

Over the past five years, Morris County has seen plenty of examples of why these races matter. In Roxbury, challenges to LGBTQ-themed books in 2022 grew into a years-long fight over what books belonged in the high school library and who should decide. Librarian Roxana Russo Caivano became a target herself, and was publicly called a “criminal,” “child predator” and “groomer” for keeping challenged books available to students. 

The controversy became a major issue in school board elections, and candidates who opposed LGBTQ+ student protections and supported greater restrictions on challenged books won seats. As the makeup of the board changed, policies shifted: in 2024, the BOE rescinded Policy 5756 protections for students, and in 2025 it overruled the school’s Review Committee recommendation and restricted access to Gender Queer, one of the most frequently challenged books in the country.

What is Policy 5756? Policy 5756 is a model policy, not a one-size-fits-all state mandate. It provides guidelines for how schools can support transgender and gender-nonconforming students, including their names and pronouns, privacy, school records, bathrooms and locker rooms, and communication with parents. Districts can develop or adapt their own policies to meet local needs, as long as they continue to meet New Jersey’s legal requirements protecting transgender students from discrimination. The guidance is intended to make sure transgender students can go to school without being singled out, discriminated against, or forced to disclose their gender identity before they are ready.

In 2023, Hanover Township, the school board adopted a parental-notification policy in requiring staff to report certain circumstances involving a student’s sexuality, sexual orientation, transitioning or gender identity. The New Jersey Attorney General challenged the policy as discriminatory, and a judge blocked it before it could take effect. Hanover revised the policy, but the new version was blocked as well, and an appellate court later upheld the injunction. The fight also generated significant legal expenses: the district’s attorneys billed more than $92,000 for all legal work during the first six months of the dispute, with numerous billing entries tied specifically to the litigation.

And just over the Morris County line in Bernards Township, the disagreement was between the board and its own educators. In 2023, members of the Bernards Township School District board voted 5-4 to reject the purchase of the sociology textbook The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology, dismissing the material as "trash" and fraught with opinion. Board member Lawrence Rascio argued the book lacked academic balance and presented unbalanced perspectives on topics such as historical protests, women's rights, and voter identification laws. Read the full story at TAPinto Basking Ridge.

These examples involve different issues, but they all show the same thing: who sits on your school board matters. BOE members can accept or reject the recommendations of teachers, librarians, administrators and review committees, change district policy, and make choices that affect students, taxpayers and the entire community. So don’t get to the bottom of your ballot and guess—or skip the race. Take the time now to learn who’s running. The names may be at the bottom of the ballot, but the job is anything but minor.