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Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Wisconsin will hold school board primaries in various counties on Tuesday due to an unusual influx of candidates brought on primarily by issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically, spring primaries in the state don't feature many races -- but ongoing debate surrounding mask mandates and schools shifting to virtual learning at times to prevent the spread of the virus have made school board elections especially contentious this year.
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The city of Appleton is holding its first school board primary in nine years, with nine candidates seeking four open seats as an increased focus has been placed on the races after demonstrators supporting and opposing masks faced off on opposite sides of the street before a board meeting last August.
"For years I think school board service was maybe not as interesting for folks, but as board meetings were forced to go virtually, I think the accessibility to meetings and engagement with what is happening certainly increased," said Kay Eggert, president of Appleton's school board, according to WLUK-TV.
Six candidates are on the ballot for two seats in Oshkosh, where parents opposing a mask mandate disrupted the start of a board meeting last August, forcing it to be postponed.
Between 2020 and 2021, a total of 17 school boards saw recall attempts over how board members handled COVID-19 and seven of those have enough challengers for seats to warrant primary elections on Tuesday.
"I'm trying to remember the last time we had a primary for school board," Butternut School District board member Gary Mertig told Wisconsin Public Radio. "It's been a long time."
In addition to COVID-19, another issue driving people to seek seats is "critical race theory," which adds a political spin to a day-to-day board issue, Jerald Podair, a history professor at Lawrence University, said.
"Critical race theory or the idea of critical race theory being taught in the schools, that gives parents a focus, certainly to look at," he said according to WLUK-TV. "That's much different than arguing in a much more abstract and vague way about what should we be teaching in the schools. This gives it a focus. I think that brings out interest, brings out candidates."
The winners of Tuesday's primaries will advance to a general election on April 5.
A ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week made it so that Tuesday's elections will allow absentee ballot drop boxes outside of local election clerks' offices, but made them illegal for the spring votes.
In a 4-3 ruling, the court said that since the timetable for the April 5 election is more relaxed -- and because groups looking for a stay to keep the drop box option in place had not shown interest groups the voters they represent or the public at large would suffer substantial or irreparable harm -- a stay was not necessary.
The Elections Commission, the majority wrote, "can comply with the circuit court's order so as to ameliorate concerns about voter confusion and election administration before the April 5, 2022, election commences."
In a dissent, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote that the majority decision "makes it more difficult to vote."
"With apparent disregard for the confusion it is causing, the majority provides next to no notice to municipal clerks, changing procedures at the eleventh hour and applying different procedures from those that applied to the primary in the very same election cycle," Bradley wrote.
