As a society, we purport to care about education. A recent Pew Research survey shows that improving education is a top ten issue for Americans1. But while a majority of Americans believe that local school beards should have the greatest influence on what is taught in public schools, uncontested and empty school board seats are common. In New Jersey, there was a total of 805 uncontested school board seats, and for 130 of them, no one was even on the ballot in 20152.