We need a school board election holiday

National holidays are a special part of American culture. They shape our view of the yearly calendar. We plan trips around holidays. We make time for loved ones we see far too infrequently. You might get a day off from work. Kids stay home from school.

However, what if we celebrated a holiday that was not a day of closure, but a day of opening new possibilities? We can do so, I argue, by creating a federal holiday for local school board elections. Picture a day every year where people across the United States get the day off from work and school to take a trip to their neighborhood school, walk into the gymnasium, and cast a ballot for school board candidates and public referenda. Imagine what this holiday could mean for local democracy and public education. We could see exponentially more participation in local school board elections, which could completely change the dynamics of local education policy. This is the transformative power of School Board Election Day.

How would School Board Election Day work? Think of January’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, originally observed as a federal holiday in 1986. Sen. Harris Wofford (PA) and the late great Rep. (and my former boss) John Lewis (GA) co-authored the King Holiday and Service Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994. Since the mid-1990s, the federal holiday has been a time to engage in community service projects. AmeriCorps, the federal government’s premier community service agency, takes the lead in organizing service activities for the public.