2030 Slate General Statement on Politics and Partisanship in School Board Elections

While the 2030 candidates welcome support from any person, regardless of background or political persuasion, what we will not accept is the incorporation of partisan politics into school board races.

There is a reason school board elections were originally established as nonpartisan. Earlier generations understood that partisan politics has no constructive role in the governance of public education. Over the past decade, the descent into culture-war politics has helped fuel crisis in our schools -- financial, academic, social, and organizational. It has encouraged mission drift, governance failures, administrative and bureaucratic expansion, and, above all, it has harmed the very people the system is supposed to serve: our students and the teachers responsible for their education.

For that reason, while we acknowledge Dan O’Donnell’s interest in this election, we respectfully decline to be identified as a “conservative favorite” or as aligned with any political faction. Our slate is committed to nonpartisan principles in public education, and given our policy focus, we do not seek or welcome political endorsements from parties, partisan media figures, or their affiliates.

It is for the same reason that we strongly denounce not only the Democratic Party’s involvement in the Wauwatosa School Board race, but also the about-face of candidates who spent months cloaking themselves in claims of nonpartisanship and non-affiliation, only to abandon those claims when convenience and campaign necessity intervened.

If elected, the 2030 Slate will work vigorously through the WSD advocacy process and with state policymakers to pursue reforms that would prohibit partisan involvement -- financial or otherwise -- in school board elections going forward.

If voters agree and the 2030 slate is elected, the era of partisanship in the Wauwatosa School District will end on April 7, 2026, and we will set the example for the state and the nation.