All seven seats on the board were up for election this year. In addition to the contest in which adjunct community college professor J.C. Romero, a gay former teacher, bested Ellison, in the Dec. 5 runoff election. In Districts 2 and 7, incumbents Ethan Ashley and Nolan Marshall Jr. were reelected. An open seat in District 5 went to Katie Baudouin, and newcomer Carlos Zervigon won District 6.

In the runup to the general election, attention focused on some candidates’ desire to weaken the superintendent’s authority over closing failing schools in the nearly all-charter district. The final results of the election suggest such a change is unlikely.

Several prominent education groups did not endorse in the District 4 contest, though less than two weeks before the runoff, an . The Black Alliance for Civic Empowerment Action Fund, which received donations from a political action committee associated with Democrats for Education Reform and from Walmart heir Jim Walton, paid for signs and mailers promoting Ellison.

It’s not clear that either donor knew the organization was planning to spend in support of Ellison, who is African-American. Romero is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants.

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to The 74.��

Rather than casting a ballot himself, he urged his college-aged peers, who traditionally have a poor track record of showing up on Election Day, to make their voices heard.

“Being able to get other people to go out and vote is my form of voting,” said Cisneros, a computer science student at Benedictine University, a private Catholic school in Mesa, Arizona. As a fellow with the nonprofit immigrant-rights group Aliento, he joined a get-out-the-vote campaign that encouraged more than 25,000 young and Latino voters in the Phoenix area to participate in the election. “I was able to convince three other friends that weren’t really sure about wanting to vote to go vote.”

Efforts by Cisneros and other young people across the country may have been crucial to President-elect Joe Biden’s success. That’s especially true in several key states like Arizona and Georgia, where Biden outpolled President Donald Trump by more than 11,000 and 14,000 votes, respectively. A Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won either state since the 1990s. In Georgia, young voters have another chance to reshape federal leadership when both of its U.S. Senate seats go to a runoff election in January.

An estimated 50 to 52 percent of eligible Americans 18 to 29 years old cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election, by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. That’s a sizable surge in youth participation from just four years ago, where it was between 42 and 44 percent. This year, nearly two-thirds of young people cast ballots for Biden, according to CIRCLE.

Though voter turnout spiked this year among all age groups, young people also made up a slightly larger percentage of all voters than they did in 2016, making their support for Biden even more critical.

“Young voters, especially youth of color, powered Joe Biden’s victory,” according to CIRCLE, a leading authority in research on youth civic engagement. “In fact, in states like Georgia and Arizona, Black and Latino youth may have single-handedly made Biden competitive.”

In Georgia, Biden received an estimated 188,000 more votes from young voters than Trump, according to CIRCLE estimates. While Biden secured an estimated 57 percent of young voters in Georgia compared to 39 percent for Trump, the results varied starkly by race. About two-thirds of Georgia’s white youth voted for Trump — but a resounding 90 percent of young Black voters supported Biden.

In total, Georgia voters 18 to 29 years old made up 21 percent of all votes, 4 percentage points above the national average and a larger share than anywhere else in the country.

The youngest voters in Georgia were particularly crucial, CIRCLE found. While an estimated 54 percent of Georgia youth 25 to 29 years old voted for Biden, the president-elect’s support spiked to 60 percent among those 18 to 24 years old.

A blue wave in Georgia has been years in the making. Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s deputy director, attributed the rise to sustained youth outreach.

“What we’ve seen over the years with respect to youth engagement is not that young people don’t care,” she said, but are often confused by the process as first-time voters. But a get-out-the-vote effort spearheaded by Stacey Abrams through groups like the New Georgia Project “helped connect the election to their everyday experiences.”

After losing her 2018 gubernatorial bid where there were widespread allegations of voter suppression, Abrams went on to help register .

A united front

Among those new voters was Cameron Nolan, a 21-year-old senior at Morehouse College and president of the historically black institution’s student government association. Though results of the presidential race are now being recounted by hand in Georgia, Biden maintains a lead that election observers say will not be undone, one that may not have materialized had young voters — and Black youth in particular —��stayed home on Election Day.

After Abrams lost the governor’s race, Nolan said young voters in his state formed “a united front,” leading to a civic participation surge that turned Georgia blue for the first time in decades.

“A lot of it comes from the fear of the unknown and understand that ‘Alright, we just experienced four years of this particular presidency, are you really comfortable enough with doing another four?’” he said. “For a lot of the young voters whose visions didn’t necessarily align with the president, it became a space where you could say ‘Alright, this is what we could possibly do if we band together.’”

Abrams’s narrow defeat helped Georgia’s Black community understand that they wield significant power, said Nolan, who’s majoring in economics and has accepted a job at Salesforce after graduation.

“It was like “OK, this is the power that we can have if we move as a collective,’ and I think the young Black voter community completely understands that now,” he said. “I just have a large appreciation for the way the youth were able to come up in this election.”

Nolan, who wasn’t old enough to vote in the 2016 election, said the top issues motivating his vote for Biden included climate change and the president-elect’s proposals on college affordability. He also lauded Biden’s proposed $70 billion federal investment in historically black colleges and universities like Morehouse, and blasted Trump on issues of race. After George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer this summer, Nolan used his skills as a filmmaker to share his perspectives on being a Black man in America.

“The Trump presidency led to a lot of overt racism —��not to say that racism was incited by President Trump, not to say that he created it — but merely him being in office was representative of individuals being very comfortable with their own personal racist views,” he said. Especially in the Deep South, Trump flags and the Confederate Flag were closely aligned, he said. “These past four years have been kind of unsettling.”

Ahead of the presidential election, the Morehouse College Student Government Association launched nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts, which centered largely on social media campaigns because of the pandemic as students attended classes virtually. Efforts included a voter registration drive and providing students with sample ballots so they knew what to expect on Election Day.

But even with the presidential election in the rearview mirror, the student group’s work is far from over. The runoff election in January will decide both U.S. Senate seats — and the central issue of whether the GOP, which has dominated Georgia politics for longer than these voters have been alive, will maintain its control of the chamber. For Georgians who were too young to participate in the presidential election, the January runoff will also be their first chance to cast a ballot.

“A lot of our future efforts will definitely be centered around voter education because we can’t necessarily tell you who to vote for, but my ask is that you always make an informed vote,” Nolan said.

Biden and Latinos

To Cisneros, the presidential election’s outcome was critical to his livelihood and to those of other undocumented people. In Arizona, where Biden was Thursday, 68 percent of Latino youth voted for him.

Cisneros, a college sophomore, was born in Mexico but moved to Arizona with his mother on his 7th birthday to escape an abusive father and because of a medical condition. He arrived at a Phoenix trailer park in June 2008 — too late to be eligible for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protected young people who had been in the U.S. since 2007.

Over the course of his term in office, Trump waged a yearslong effort to end the DACA program and cracked down on undocumented immigrants. As the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement , Cisneros lived in a state of paralysis and feared that his mother, a hotel housekeeper, could get swept up by ICE.

“There was a sense of panic,” he said. “Every single noise that I heard outside, I looked outside and tried to see if it was ICE or something. We didn’t even leave the house during that time. A lot of people in the community were feeling the same way I was feeling.”

Biden’s victory gives him a sense of optimism. Biden has promised to make immigration reform a top priority, but his success could be hindered if Republicans maintain control of the Senate. And despite Biden’s promise of creating a for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, Cisneros isn’t holding his breath.

“The pathway to citizenship is something we’ve been promised since Obama and it still hasn’t happened,” he said. “Sure, you can keep your hopes up, but until it happens, you’re going to be very skeptical about what they’re saying.”

Reyna Montoya, Aliento’s founder and CEO, said her group focused on youth engagement because encouraging people to become first-time voters comes with lifelong implications —��and in turn could improve the lives of immigrants who are affected by the outcome of elections but are unable to participate themselves.

“Every single decision, from the pandemic to immigration, it includes all of us,” said Montoya, a DACA recipient who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in 2003. “I think we have a unique opportunity to ensure that we’re listening to our young voices, the young people who are going to be leading in the future.”

But she also declined to give Biden a ringing endorsement. Deportations surged under Obama, and immigrant rights groups famously labeled him the “Deporter in Chief.” It was during the Obama administration, in 2012, when immigration officials detained her father for nine months before his release. He was just recently granted asylum, she said.

But because Obama approved the DACA program, Montoya said his legacy offers “a bittersweet taste.” In an effort to distance himself, Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president, the former president’s immigration record a “big mistake.”

That’s why it’s important to hold Biden accountable to his promises, Cisneros said. In fact, he accused Biden and the Democratic Party of taking Latino voters for granted. Biden’s with older Latino voters may have handed him defeats in Florida and Texas.

“The younger voter population showed up in Arizona and all across the country,” he said. “I think that if Biden doesn’t do something like a pathway to citizenship and extend DACA, the chances of being reelected are going to be lowered due to the Latinx community.”

Playing the long game

Even after Georgia’s January runoff, Kiesa of CIRCLE noted that efforts in the state could be instrumental in elections for years to come. That’s because the state’s sustained get-out-the-vote campaigns offer a roadmap moving forward for groups interested in increasing civic participation.

“We cannot wait until the last three months before an election and think that we’re going to dramatically change turnout,” she said. “We need both campaigns and people outside of the partisan environment to be thinking about that work.”

Among them, she said, are K-12 teachers. In , CIRCLE found a relationship between civics education in high school and young voter turnout. Young people who said they were taught in high school how to register to vote and were encouraged to show up on Election Day were more likely to follow through. They were also more knowledgeable about voting processes and were more invested in the 2020 election.

In total, nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said they were encouraged to vote in high school and half said they were taught how to register to vote —��but the results also found stark racial disparities. While two-thirds of white respondents remembered being encouraged to vote in high school, just half of Black participants recalled similar experiences in high school.

“This is one of the reasons why we believe the education system can be so critical in reducing some of these inequities we see within our systems of election,” she said. “Teachers and K-12 leaders and election officials can all focus a great deal more on that 16- to 18-year-old range — and even earlier if possible — to really make sure that we have a more representative youth electorate.”

Lead Image: Volunteers with the immigrant-rights group Aliento, which launched a campaign to energize young and Latino voters in Arizona, encourage people to go to the polls on Election Day. (Photo courtesy Aliento)

On Nov. 24, Pete Harckham over Republican rival Rob Astorino, securing Democrats a veto-proof supermajority in the New York state Senate. His win followed on the heels of a handful of other closely contested races, including in upstate New York, in Rochester and on Long Island. While hopeful, party leaders considered a supermajority a long shot soon after the election, even as absentee ballots began to steadily erode GOP leads in key districts. A number of Democrats who claimed seats have expressed support for increases to public school funding amid the pandemic, including by taxing the state’s wealthiest residents, progressive measures opposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.��

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Election night seemed like a success for New York Republicans, with GOP candidates not only pulling ahead in enough contested state Senate races to stave off what some had hoped would be a Democratic supermajority, but also taking back seats in Albany’s upper chamber.

Voters, however, returned about 1.87 million absentee ballots statewide this year, according to the New York State Board of Elections, and those votes are beginning to turn the tide in certain districts, leaving some wondering if the state could have experienced its own “red mirage.” Absentee ballots, cast in far greater numbers this year because of the pandemic, have skewed heavily Democratic across the nation.

Going into the Nov. 3 vote, Democrats needed just two more seats in the 63-member Senate, barring defections, to secure a supermajority. While Republican and Democratic party leaders are still unclear on what 2020’s outcome will ultimately be for the state Senate overall, most agree that a supermajority remains a long shot.

“If we gain three [seats] upstate and lose three downstate, no, it doesn’t give you a supermajority,” Democratic state Chairman Jay Jacobs told The 74 Friday. “If you save some [seats] on Long Island, it just might.”

According to , Democrats have won 28 seats and Republicans have won nine, leaving 26 races too close to call.

Had it been achieved, a Democratic supermajority would have cost Andrew Cuomo, the state’s moderate Democratic governor, his veto power. That, in turn, could have ushered in major changes for school funding, as lawmakers try to pay for the precautions necessary for sending kids back to school amid the pandemic. Several of the bills up for consideration would have delivered that money to schools by taxing the state’s wealthiest residents. That also appears unlikely now.

Cheryl Couser, the deputy director of public information at the New York State Board of Elections, said that while in the past, absentee ballots have comprised a very small percentage of the state’s overall vote, this year has been different.

About 2.4 million absentee ballots were distributed to voters statewide, she said, and the 1.87 million that were sent back —��over four times the number received in 2016 —��are now in the process of being reviewed and counted. Ballots submitted by military or overseas voters postmarked by Nov. 3 can still be received through Nov. 16 by county boards.

New Yorkers weren’t able to start counting absentee ballots until Nov. 6. Since then, Democrats have made gains in eight state Senate districts, and progressives hope that change signals an overall shift in their favor.

Democrat Rachel May of Syracuse saw that movement in her own district: late on the night of Nov. 5, she was in a near-even tie with Republican challenger Sam Rodgers, but she pulled ahead once the absentee votes started rolling in.

“I was expecting to pick up about 8,000 or 10,000 in the absentee votes,” she told The 74. “I’m on track to pick up over 12,000. That bodes well for some of my colleagues who are right on the edge.”

May, whose 2018 win coincided with the Democrats winning a majority in the Senate after of GOP control, declared victory Thursday night.

“All of the races are shifting,” she said. “It’s changing as we speak.”

Jacobs was hopeful about potential Democratic wins but said the jury’s still out. “The outcome is dependent on whether or not the margins can be overcome by the heavily Democratic absentee voters,” he said. “We’ll just have to see.”

He’s not hopeful about Sen. Monica Martinez’s race in Suffolk County, where the progressive is down by a huge margin: 43 percent to Alexis Weik’s 57 percent. But he thinks other incumbent Democrats, including Sen. Jim Gaughran in Long Island’s 5th Senate District and Kevin Thomas in the neighboring 6th, could win with roughly 500-vote margins.

“Then there’s [Andrew] Gournardes in Brooklyn,” he said. “There are a lot of absentee ballots to be opened there, we may win that. And [Westchester incumbent] Peter Harkham’s in a similar position. A lot of Democratic absentee ballots are in, we just have to count them.”

New York State Republican Chairman Nick Langworthy disagrees. “We’re confident that we’ve stopped the supermajority, and we’ll make gains,” he said. “We’re just not sure how many.”

Without the supermajority, Democrats would be fighting an uphill battle to get tax-the-wealthy legislation passed.

“Some of [the bills] are, in theory, good ideas,” said Jacobs, a longtime Cuomo ally, “but the practicality of it—��I think there are unintended consequences.” He cited the oft-mentioned possibility of wealthy New Yorkers fleeing the state. The bills under consideration would tax New Yorkers making at least $1 million a year.

“A stronger Republican conference will hopefully slow down some of the aggressive leftward policies we’ve seen in the last two years,” said Langworthy, whose candidates ran on law-and-order concerns and their opposition to the state’s recently adopted bail reform.

Last week, when it looked more like Republicans had carried the day, Cuomo , “It shouldn’t have been this close. I believe the Republicans beat the Democrats on the messaging. I think they branded Democrats as anti-law and order. And that hurt Democrats.”

Jacobs told this week that the agenda embraced by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other New York progressives “doomed” Democrats in more purple parts of the state.

Looking ahead, he and May were hopeful that the Democrat who won on the top of the ticket, president-elect Joe Biden, will offer some support in January.

“One way or another, we have to figure out how we’re going to fund schools and educate children in every community in New York,” Jacobs said.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

U.S. Rep. Don Young, a 47-year veteran of the House of Representatives and a legend of Alaska politics, fought off challenger Alyse Galvin to win his 25th term, local officials reported Wednesday. With 100 percent of the vote reported, the incumbent had prevailed by a 57-43 margin.

In a dramatic turn, just hours after the final results were reported, the 87-year-old Young also that he tested positive for COVID-19.

A Republican, Young is his party’s longest-serving member to ever serve in Congress. His mix of conservative politics, mastery of appropriations, and long-running ties with constituent groups have generally insulated him from Democratic opponents; a penchant for crude language and offbeat behavior — he once held a knife to the throat of then-Rep. John Boehner, though the men later became close friends — have also contributed to his national profile.

But in Galvin he faced a formidable candidate. A former teacher and homeschool mother, the 55-year-old helped the advocacy group Great Alaska Schools several years ago to lobby for more school funding. Faced with a global crash in oil prices, the state — which derives nearly all of its operating revenue from the petroleum industry — has imposed unpopular K-12 cuts over the last few years.

Running as a novice candidate in 2018, Galvin gave Young one of the toughest races of his political career by holding him to a 6.5 point victory. Key to her appeal was that even as she won the Democratic Party’s nomination both that year and in 2020, she ran her campaigns as an independent — a necessary strategy in one of the nation’s reddest states.

She was unable to replicate her success on Election Night, as the GOP enjoyed surprising triumphs in House races around the country. Still, with Young approaching his 90s, Galvin may opt for another try. As one Alaska political scientist told The 74 in a pre-election preview, “She might get a third run because the Democrats aren’t thinking that, by funding her, they’re guaranteed a win. My hunch is that they’re grooming her and working with her because Don Young is old, and she could be someone they’re thinking about keeping in the wings.”

Young, who has been criticized for downplaying the dangers of COVID and appearing maskless at public events, said that he felt strong and was working from home.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.

When U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos withdrew her rule directing pandemic relief funds to private schools and decided not to appeal a federal court ruling against the plan, much of the education community let out a sigh of relief.

But the possibility that President Donald Trump will issue an executive order to accomplish what DeVos could not has them wondering whether the outgoing administration is taking a parting shot before leaving office at what the secretary calls “government schools.”

Most observers cast doubt that Trump could legally allocate funds for school vouchers. Three federal judges, including one he appointed, already ruled that the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act left no room for the secretary to steer the funds as she wished.

“It is not clear what they have up their sleeves,” said Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, who served as an expert witness in a similar lawsuit regarding CARES Act spending in his state. “Given the litigation losses they have suffered with their first tricks, I struggle to imagine how their second tricks would be any more legally plausible.”

On Thursday, reported that the president is considering a slew of final executive actions, including providing relief funds to parents whose schools haven’t reopened so they could pay for tuition at private or religious schools.

Attorney Tamerlin Godley, who represented the NAACP in one of the relief fund cases against DeVos, said the executive order would be illegal if Trump uses funds that Congress intended for a specific purpose.

“Only Congress can appropriate funds,” she said.

Sasha Pudleski, advocacy director at AASA, The School Superintendents Association, called the plan “more bluster for the base” in a “There’s also nothing he can do that would be meaningful here. He can’t create a voucher program vis-a-vis [executive order]. He can’t force states into vouchers either.”

And even school choice proponents don’t think he should try.

If there were some mechanism for changing how CARES Act funds can be used, “it would be a terrible way to make policy,” said Neal McCluskey, the director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “Legislatures, which represent the people, should decide how money will be spent through law, not presidents through executive orders.”

The possibility that Trump would continue to use his executive powers up until he leaves office isn’t necessarily a surprise, but it does have some policy experts wondering what source of funds the president would tap if he could.

“I am guessing he’d focus on unused funds from CARES, but most of that education funding was already allocated to the state level” and has flowed to districts, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, AASA’s associate executive director for advocacy and governance. “Would he take money from other parts of CARES to put to vouchers? I anticipate states would have concerns with that.”

States have — a year after the relief package was enacted — to return to the federal government any of the relief funds they haven’t allocated to school districts. There are longer timelines for administrative funds. But even if they return it, “I don’t think the Act just lets the president spend remaining funds however he sees fit,” McCluskey said.

The CARES Act also included more than $300 million for DeVos to distribute through grants, but she’s already these funds. Another was allocated toward a fund for helping schools and colleges recover from a “traumatic event.”

As Ng said, there’s the question of whether the president would turn to relief funds not initially intended for education to accomplish his goal. For example, the White House has been for authorization to spend for the Paycheck Protection Program.

Pudelski said that any executive order the president issues would immediately be undone by the Biden administration. But depending on how quickly Trump acts, there is a small possibility, Black said, that he could follow through on a promise he and DeVos have been pushing since the beginning of the pandemic.

“They won’t be around long enough to deal with the legal fallout and the money could very well be gone by the time anyone catches up,” Black said, “so that is a realistic problem.”

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.

In another blow to state Democrats’ lofty 2020 ambitions, Republicans have retained their majorities in the Arizona state legislature. After narrowly missing their chance to flip both the state Senate and House of Representatives, the Democrats have chosen new caucus leaders in each chamber.

National Democrats had hoped to make serious inroads in the state legislative ranks this year, eyeing closely divided capitals around the country. But their efforts to win unified control over states like Minnesota and North Carolina, or at least disrupt Republican dominance in a major state like Texas, all crashed last Tuesday. Though such races generate far less media coverage than presidential or congressional campaigns, their outcomes hold disproportionate influence over issues of K-12 funding, accountability, and school choice, which are nearly all determined far from Washington, D.C.

Arizona was thought to be the best target for Democrats hungry to gain more control over state-level policymaking. Just two seats in the House, and three in the Senate, separated the party from building new majorities in Phoenix, a feat they haven’t managed since the early 1990s. After years relegated to minority status, they have been powerless to slow the state’s huge and controversial expansion of education savings accounts, a means of school choice that provides families with funds that can be applied to private school tuition. .

But while several races remained close in the days following Election Night, it gradually became clear that victory had eluded them again. Democrats netted zero new seats in the House, ousting one GOP incumbent while losing one of their own. In the Senate, they still have a strong chance of capturing one seat thanks to the strong campaign of Christine Marsh, the 2016 Arizona Teacher of the Year.

Marsh made her political debut in 2018 after participating in the Red for Ed walkouts over teacher pay. In an interview that year with The 74, Marsh said that the precipitous surge in teacher activism was “the effect of decisions the governor and our legislature have made for a very long time — a couple of decades, but culminating in the last year or two. We’ve gotten to the end, where the last couple of straws have broken the camel’s back.”

Though she fell short of defeating incumbent Sen. Kate Brophy McGee by less than 300 votes that November, she currently maintains a 500-vote lead with over 74 percent of ballots reported. In another victory for teacher activists and their allies, the Invest in Education Act — a ballot measure proposing to generate more education funding by raising taxes on high earners — also won passage last Tuesday.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.

Californians have long complained that the state doesn’t adequately fund education. But last week, they still opted not to amend a 40-year-old property tax formula that could have added roughly $4 billion a year to the state’s education budget.

Proposition 15 divided the state in half, with official results released Wednesday showing it fell 51.8 percent against to 48.2 percent in favor. The measure would have altered 1978’s Proposition 13 — known for inspiring a across the country — and based commercial and industrial property taxes on market rates instead of purchase price.

Ted Lempert, a former state assemblyman and president of Children Now, an advocacy organization, said he wasn’t surprised the vote was so close, even though the proposition was projected to win before Election Day.

“The governor and legislature will need to take other action to increase school funding,” he said, including increasing spending on early education.

Public Advocates, a nonprofit civil rights law firm that focuses in part on educational equity, blamed “wealthy corporations” for the measure’s defeat. Opponents, led by the business community, spent more than $60 million on opposition efforts. They argued it would force businesses to leave the state and would have been another step toward rolling back Proposition 13’s protections for homeowners as well.

Proponents of the measure — and big-name contributors like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — spent even more, at least $63 million, in their efforts to pass the measure. Democrats across the country, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, also contributed and campaigned in favor of it.

“Californians know that there is an unacceptable gap between the haves and have-nots in our state,” according to a statement from Public Advocates. “Now, the fight for progressive sources of new revenue turns to the legislature where we can build on this momentum.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who endorsed Proposition 15, will introduce the 2021-22 budget early next year. He will then release a revised budget in May when the revenue outlook will be clearer. States are also still waiting on Congress to agree on another pandemic relief package.

In a , Heather Hough, the executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education, said the measure’s defeat would create “a real danger that policymakers will take this as a directive from the voters that investing in schools is not a priority for them.”

Per-student spending in California consistently trails the and is half of what New York spends. Proposition 13 often gets the blame, because it shifted a greater share of the responsibility for funding education to the .

That leaves schools more reliant on personal income taxes, a revenue source that is more “highly susceptible to economic fluctuations and vulnerable during a recession,” according to .

In 2013, California voters approved the Local Control Funding Formula, intended to distribute more funding to schools serving a greater share of high-needs students. Experts generally agree it’s an equitable system, just that it’s underfunded.

“I think the bones of the [formula] are really good, but there’s an adequacy issue,” said Lawrence Picus, a school finance expert and professor at the University of Southern California. “The real problem in California is that revenues are so tightly tied to the performance of the economy. It’s a boom or bust thing.”

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES: See our full coverage of the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools following Election Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for The 74 Newsletter.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis over Democrat Cal Cunningham a week ago, but it wasn’t until Tuesday that the challenger, his campaign weighed down by of an extramarital affair, accepted the outcome.

With results still unofficial on Tuesday and 98 percent of precincts reporting, Cunningham, who received 47 percent of the vote, conceded the victory to Tillis, who received 48.7 percent.

“The end of this campaign does not mark the end of our need to improve access to health care, strengthen education, heal racial wounds, and create better jobs,” Cunningham wrote in his , which he posted on Twitter. “These are causes that still must be championed.”

In a race that also saw a positive COVID-19 test for Tillis, the incumbent’s victory was unexpected. Despite the affair, Cunningham had been leading in the polls up until Election Day, with 53 percent of the vote.

The outcome of the race was considered a factor in deciding who controls the Senate during the next administration. Tillis’s win tips the balance in the GOP’s favor — 49 to 48.

But experts also saw the race as a measure of whether the Republicans would across the South, which was demonstrated in President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.

Now Tillis is putting his energy toward raising campaign funds and getting Republican voters to the polls for the runoff election Jan. 5 in Georgia, where appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler and incumbent Sen. David Perdue will face off against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — ultimately determining who controls the Senate.

“Our race in North Carolina is over now, but we’ve got to keep working to defend the American dream by holding the U.S. Senate,” Tillis .

It was also unclear how soon the outcome of races in North Carolina would be known after the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 28 not to interfere with a nine-day period for counting absentee ballots put in place by the State Board of Elections. Ballots postmarked by Election Day and that have arrived by 5 p.m. Nov. 12 will still be counted.

Republicans had asked the court to intervene, saying that the board interfered with the legislature’s authority over election procedures. Newly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not participate in the ruling.

The impact of the affair

In the days leading up to the election, Tillis, a one-time PTA president at his daughter’s high school, used Cunningham’s affair to suggest the candidate shouldn’t be .

Immediately following the news that Cunningham, a husband and father of two, exchanged sexually-tinged text messages and had an affair with a California married woman, the race between him and Tillis . Cunningham’s campaign took a more in the final weeks before the election to keep the candidate from having to respond to questions about it.

Tillis, on the other hand, received from business owners for focusing more on securing a confirmation for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before Election Day than passing another pandemic relief bill.

Cunningham, an Army veteran who led an environmental services company before winning the Democratic primary, portrayed himself as a stronger education candidate, increasing teacher pay and Title I funding for high-poverty schools. As a former state senator, he voted in favor of the North Carolina Pre-K program and said he would work to create career pipelines for early childhood educators at the federal level.

Last year, Cunningham used the release of calling for more funding for the state’s schools to say the state “took a severe turn away from progress” under Tillis’s leadership as speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives.

The North Carolina Association of Educators endorsed Cunningham and Tillis during the campaign for not supporting the pandemic relief bill passed by the U.S. House.

But Tillis touted his support of the Every Student Succeeds Act and said he has worked to expand job training programs and college opportunities for low-income and minority students.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES: See our full coverage of the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools following Election Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for The 74 Newsletter.

Democrats’ hopes for flipping the Senate now largely depend on capturing two seats in Georgia that won’t be decided until a runoff election in early January. While the outcome could limit the reach of Biden’s platform in Congress, experts expect him to turn back some aspects of the Trump agenda by making early use of his executive powers.

In the short-term, by announcing a Monday, he’s already focusing on issues of immediate concern to the teachers unions that contributed millions to defeat the president.

“I think teachers unions are going to expect Biden to stand with them on slowing the move towards school reopening,” said Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “They will want him to change the public messaging on reopening, even before he officially takes office — to signal to the nation that the safety of teachers and students are a top priority for his incoming administration.”

After four years of President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos shrinking the federal footprint in education policy, the nation now has a president-elect who has elevated the concerns of teachers, and has said that in educator and future First Lady Jill Biden, they will have one of their own in the White House. He has pledged a broad array of expensive programs, ranging from affordable child care and free preschool to tripling the size of Title I and college loan forgiveness. Like former President Barack Obama, Biden is expected to use executive powers to steer school districts in the direction he wants them to go. But the nation’s shaky financial outlook, a soaring national debt. and the uncertainty of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s status as majority leader will all determine how much Biden can deliver on those promises.

“A lot of what he was hoping to do hinged on big buckets of funding,” said Charles Barone, vice president of K-12 policy at Democrats for Education Reform. The Republicans, he said, would want “budget offsets for any increases in funding.” Many are also signaling a to increase the national debt.

McConnell sent mixed signals on the next relief package last week, saying he would reconsider his earlier opposition to including state and local funding, which would help prevent cuts in education, but also noted a positive might indicate the nation doesn’t need as much help.

With Trump continuing to contest the election results, his agenda during his remaining days in office is unclear. McConnell will need to negotiate with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on funding to keep the government running, which expires in a month. Pelosi has also she’s still holding out for a larger relief package in order to “crush the virus.”

Georgia’s ‘astonishing shift’

First, however, McConnell will learn whether he remains leader of the majority or if the Democrats, motivated by Biden’s win, pull off an extraordinary upset in Georgia.

Democrats need to win both Georgia Senate seats to reach a 50-50 split, leaving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to break any tie. Two other undecided seats favor GOP incumbents. Sen. Dan Sullivan has a large lead in Alaska, and Sen. Thom Tillis is leading by less than 2 percentage points in North Carolina, where vote counting continues this week.

With Georgia having played a crucial role in Biden’s win, it’s possible the state could offer a victory for the two Democrats — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. If that happens, “it would be an astonishing shift that brings to fruition the state’s gradual transition from being a red state to a purple one,” said Steven White, assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University.

But Thomas Toch, the director of FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University, said he would be surprised if that happened. “Republicans will spend unlimited resources to get at least one of those seats,” he said.

‘The adults in the room’

With that in mind, Democrats are preparing for a scenario in which the Republicans retain control. There’s a chance Biden and McConnell could leverage the relationship they’ve had for more than 40 years and compromise, said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

“I see a scenario where there is a lot of upside for these guys positioning themselves as the adults in the room,” Hess said, adding that with any scenario, “you get more done [in education] than under Trump.”

Perhaps due to the uncertainty over the Senate, observers expect Biden to begin his tenure by drafting executive actions designed to restore Obama-era directives withdrawn by DeVos. These include intended to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions and another instructing schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity.

Toch suggested Biden might feel pressure to roll back DeVos’s new Title IX rule regarding sexual harassment and violence, but the regulation went through a thorough rulemaking process, and a federal court has already thrown out one of four legal challenges against it.

In an published just prior to the election, David DeSchryver of Whiteboard Advisors wrote that Biden’s regulatory agenda might also include student loan forgiveness, protections for students at for-profit colleges, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and voluntary school desegregation strategies.

Taking the regulatory route, however, could get Biden off to a rough first 100 days if he goes “pedal to the metal on pen and phone,” Hess said, referencing Obama’s record of avoiding the legislative process through executive actions.

Biden’s rapport with the Senate could also affect the reception given his nominee for education secretary.

There was a time when the Senate would “tend to defer to a new president” on cabinet appointees as long as there were no major ethical or legal complications, Barone said, but added, “I don’t think that spirit prevails anymore.”

Republicans, Hess added, could also be looking for “payback” after four years of harsh criticism toward DeVos and her private school choice agenda. McConnell has already that he would reject any far-left nominees for cabinet positions. The GOP would probably raise eyebrows about some names that have already been floated, including American Federation of Teachers President or former National Education Association .

‘Kids returning with gaps’��

If Biden doesn’t succeed at tripling Title I funding — which would push the figure from about $15.8 billion to over $47 billion a year — there are still ways he could incrementally move forward on some of the issues he promised to address.

Hess suggested Republicans might get behind an increase in funding for special education, especially since so many students with special needs haven’t received the services outlined in their individual education programs during school closures.

Increasing funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act “has been decades in the making,” noted Elena Silva, an education policy analyst at New America, a left-of-center think tank.

Because of the pandemic, there could also be increased support for expanding another pillar in Biden’s education platform — the community school model, in which districts work with other organizations, such as nonprofits, to provide after-school programs and address issues such as hunger, housing and mental health.

“We know that we are going to have a lot of kids returning with gaps in learning and varying levels of trauma,” she said. “School has to be a hub of care.”

‘The backbone’ of the economy

Biden’s agenda offered considerable attention to early-childhood, another sector hoping for some quick action to rebuild programs that allow parents to continue working while also preparing children for kindergarten.

“We cannot continue to underfund and undervalue a system that is the backbone of the rest of the economy, Rhian Evans Allvin, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children said in a statement.

It’s an issue that has bipartisan support, but has been tied up in months of failed negotiations over another relief bill.

Biden’s plan for Title I increases includes universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, but Silva noted the way the president-elect goes about expanding early learning programs could determine if Republicans get on board.

Most state pre-K programs already operate with a mix of school- and community-based centers, but conservatives might push for a system that emphasizes more parent choice and private sector contracts over expanding the role of public schools.

Finding common ground over choice in K-12, however, could be especially hard. Biden advocates tighter controls on federal funding for charter schools that are linked to for-profit companies and is completely opposed to any public funding for private school choice.

But he’s entering the While House after Trump succeeded at sitting a supermajority of conservative judges on the Supreme Court, which demonstrated earlier this year in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that it’s sympathetic to allowing public funds to flow to religious schools.

DeVos has suggested that Espinoza — in which the Court ruled private schools can’t be excluded from tax credit-funded scholarship programs just because they’re religious — could extend to religiously-affiliated charter schools. Support for tax credit funding for private school choice and homeschooling has picked up steam during the pandemic, with DeVos in September that all but one Republican senator voted in favor of a relief plan that included such provisions.

By July, almost a quarter of all federal judges were Trump appointees, according to the . In an address to reporters before Biden was declared the winner, McConnell said that in addition to reaching a compromise over funding, the Senate will spend the rest of the session confirming Trump’s judicial nominees.

“There [are] some more judges to do,” he said. “We’re going to continue to confirm lifetime appointments to the courts.”

Updated November 7

Following three suspenseful days of ballot counting, Democrat Joe Biden pushed past President Donald Trump Saturday morning to capture Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes and become the nation’s 46th president.

“The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a president for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not,” Biden .

Trump, at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, when the news was announced, promised not to go quietly. “I WON THIS ELECTION,” he , and said on Monday his legal team would be “prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated.” 

On Friday, Pennsylvania’s Republican Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court, which now includes Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett as part of a 6-3 conservative majority, to make sure election officials were mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day from those cast on Tuesday. Justice Samuel Alito , merely confirming those instructions. 

The stakes are high for the education community, where public school leaders are clamoring for more funding to stave off likely budget cuts and many have questioned the current administration’s emphasis on private school choice.

A Biden administration would mean attention from the White House to a host of issues that matter to educators and families — early-childhood education, higher teacher pay, and affordable college, among others. 

“We look forward to working closely with an administration that will embrace and fight for the values we hold dear,” including “strengthened public schools that work for all kids,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement.  

Biden, however, will likely face a Republican-controlled Senate. That could force him to scale back the size and scope of some of his big-ticket proposals, such as tripling the size of Title I and fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

“All spending initiatives have to go through Congress, and he’s not likely to get the more dramatic versions of those,” said Thomas Toch, the director of FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.

The control of the Senate also determines who Biden might want to nominate for education secretary. He has promised to fire Secretary Betsy DeVos and nominate an educator to take her place. But a nominee in close alignment with the teachers’ unions might be rejected.

Biden will also be working with a House where the Democratic majority has thinned and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to work harder to build support.

“There’s no mandate momentum here,” Toch said.

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After almost a week of counting absentee and provisional ballots, Mary Kay Murphy, longtime incumbent board member for the Gwinnett County Public Schools, officially defeated challenger Tanisha Banks, a special education teacher at one of the district’s alternative schools.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.

Georgia’s Gwinnett County not only held a closely-watched school board race this election, it’s also under the national microscope with a razor-close presidential election forcing a recount and more than 3,500 absentee ballots yet to be tallied.

To Democrats running for a seat on the county’s five-member school board, however, those uncertainties could change the outcome of one of the races and flip the makeup from one nonwhite member to four.

“Gwinnett County is tracking nationally. The absentee ballots are predominantly Democratic,” said Tarece Johnson, a Black board member-elect who will fill the seat of 47-year member Louise Radloff, who she defeated in the June primary. Johnson ran unopposed.

By Wednesday morning, with all precincts reporting, incumbent Mary Kay Murphy led challenger Tanisha Banks, a Black special education teacher at one of the district’s alternative schools, with just 50.81 percent of the vote.

Murphy, who has been on the board since 1997, has assumed victory, saying that in spite of a divisive campaign that saw conservatives label challengers as radicals, she was “confident that we will find the best in each board member and in our ability to work together.”

“Campaigning is one thing,” she said. “Governing is another.”

Banks, however, posted on her Facebook page that due to the outstanding votes, she’s not conceding defeat.

“Waiting on certification of all votes,” she wrote. “You all know I am all about facts, figures and data. When you talk the talk, you must walk the walk!”

The called the race for Murphy and Watkins Wednesday, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the county was having trouble counting absentee ballots.

Johnson said she was hoping the results would tip in Banks’s favor, noting that her perspective as a teacher would be helpful in a district that is nationally acclaimed but has experienced significant demographic shifts.

“She knows the players, more than anyone,” she said.

In the third race, Karen Watkins, a multiracial mother of two students in Gwinnett schools, defeated incumbent Carole Boyce with almost 59 percent of the vote. Boyce has served since 2005 in the district known for stable leadership.

For now, Johnson and Watkins will join Everton Blair, a graduate of Gwinnett schools elected in 2018 as the board’s first Black member.

Since 2010, the district has twice won the Broad Prize for Urban Education, presented to districts that have high overall performance while also narrowing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.

Though the district still performs above state averages on state tests, the Democratic candidates were among those calling for greater attention to lingering racial disparities in achievement and discipline.

Whether the board has three Black members or four, the dynamic between them and longtime Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks, who has led the district for 24 years, will likely change.

Earlier this year, Wilbanks’s contract was renewed for two more years, but he has said that staff members in the district are anxious about changes that could be coming. Already, , the superintendent’s longtime chief of staff and a former spokesperson for the district, announced her retirement.

Wilbanks said recently that he tries to stay out of board politics as much as he can, but that he hopes the new and current members will “continue to be a board that people respect.”

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.

As D.C. contends with how to safely reopen schools during the coronavirus pandemic, voters in the nation’s capital have added four new members to a board of key education advisors.

The nine-member D.C. State Board of Education, an independent agency that advises the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, had five open seats this election cycle. While the races haven’t been officially called, D.C. as of Friday the bulk of its ballots, with NBC Washington , “In D.C., there aren’t enough mailed ballots left to affect any local races.”

The presumptive new board members, also cited , are: Education advocate and nonprofit fellow (for Ward 2), Ward 7 Education Council chair (for Ward 7), Education Department program specialist (for Ward 8) and charter school employee (at-large member).

Retired teacher and Ward 4 incumbent Frazier O’Leary ran unopposed.

The D.C. State Board of Education doesn’t wield much power over public schools since the city went under mayoral control in 2007 — though the board does set broad policies governing things like academic standards and graduation requirements. (One current State Board of Education member, for example, is heading a committee to review the city’s long-standing social studies standards).

Members, rather, serve as vocal education advocates, and will be weighing in as the city looks to begin safely reopening its schools. It’s an open question for now after D.C. Public Schools on Monday cancelled plans to partially re-open for up to 7,000 pre-K to fifth grade students on Nov. 9, due to pushback from the teachers’ union and an unsolidified staffing plan.

At least three of the four new board members, with The Washington Post, have expressed interest in revisiting mayoral control of schools, and making certain agencies — like the Office of the State Superintendent of Education — more independent from the mayor’s office. All four also weren’t wholly onboard with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s now-delayed school reopening plan, saying it felt rushed and was lacking necessary collaboration with teachers and the community.

They’ll also advocate their own priorities, from improving reading and digital literacy among students to updating the student funding formula to better serve .

Thompson and Reid were endorsed by the Washington Teachers Union. Patterson and Chang were endorsed by.

Some initial tweets from the presumptive winners below:

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES: See our full coverage of the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools following Election Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for The 74 Newsletter. 

For Stephanie Byers, running for office was never the plan. But when, a mere five months after her retirement from a 29-year career teaching high school band, friends convinced her to enter politics, she understood the implications.

“This gives me a chance to use my voice where I can make a concrete difference for people,” Byers, 57, told the .

Byers made history Tuesday night as Kansas’s first transgender legislator, and the nation’s first transgender lawmaker of Indigenous ancestry. Byers to win her Democratic-leaning district, according to local outlets.

Currently, there are only four transgender state legislators nationwide. Come January, Byers will join their ranks, along with Sarah McBride who for Delaware state Senate, and Taylor Small who bested her opponent to in the Vermont state House. As a member of the Chickasaw Nation, Byers’s win makes her both the first transgender person of Native ancestry and the first transgender person of color to win a state legislative seat in the U.S.

Though Byers hoped voters would support her on account of her whole person, not just her gender identity, she also does not shy away from who she is.

“All politics are kind of identity politics,” Byers explained in a . “It’s about how much [candidates] can show of who they are and how they operate so that people go, ‘Yes. That’s somebody that I can hire to represent me.’”

After years going as “Mr. Byers” in band class, she came out as a transgender woman in 2014. Her colleagues and students were overwhelmingly supportive of her transition, reported the Wichita Eagle. And in 2018, she was named by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network after having been nominated by her school’s principal.

It was only after she left the classroom that Byers began to think more about the politics of education, like a perennial lack of money for schools. “I didn’t really have much time outside of my class to be able to stand up and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t right,’” said Byers. “And so when I retired, that’s one of the things that kind of percolated around in my head.”

Now headed to Topeka, Byers will advocate for adequate school funding and better working conditions for teachers, including higher pay, according to her . “First-rate teachers are essential to a beneficial education. Kansas kids deserve the best education possible,” she writes.

On Tuesday evening, Byers monitored election results with her wife of five years, Lori Haas, around a fire pit in their backyard. Video shows Byers taking a phone call after nightfall, presumably from campaign staff. When the first-time candidate realizes she has won, Byers’ eyes grow watery and she reflects emotionally on the race and what brought her here.��

“That was one of the reasons for running, was to make the world change.”

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Updated Nov. 9

Charter school supporters and teachers union backers each won a seat on Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board Tuesday after a campaign that again set records for spending.

Incumbent Scott Schmerelson, who was endorsed by United Teachers Los Angeles, is expected to hold on to his seat representing District 3 despite big spending by charter advocates who backed his opponent Marilyn Koziatek. Schmerelson was ahead by roughly 7.5 percentage points Monday when Koziatek .

In District 7, newcomer Tanya Ortiz Franklin was well ahead of union-endorsed candidate Patricia Castellanos. Franklin led 57.97 percent to 42.03 percent as of Thursday morning. Castellanos conceded in a Facebook .

Los Angeles Unified is America’s second-largest district, serving more than 600,000 students, most of them low-income students of color whose families have felt the brunt of the pandemic and the hardships of distance learning. The sprawling district is the largest in the country with an elected school board.

The seven-member board is a battleground for a long-running fight between L.A. charter school advocates and the teachers union, which opposes charter school growth. The in the district serve 138,000 K-12 students. Of the other five members, two are strong union supporters.

Franklin won the seat vacated by the termed-out board President Richard Vladovic, who was seen as a swing vote but “more frequently allied with unions than charters” in his third and final term, the . Franklin is expected to give a “subtle” edge to charter supporters, but her background is in district schools, the paper said.

Charter school supporters spent millions of dollars on behalf of Franklin and Koziatek and attacking their opponents, dramatically outspending the union in this week’s election as well as the March . Total combined spending from both sides was almost $17.5 million.

“This election has turned out to be a very expensive jump-ball,” Dan Schnur, a political science professor in California told the .

Schmerelson, 69, is a retired teacher and principal first elected to the board in 2015. Franklin, 36, is a former educator and attorney who now works at Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit that oversees some district schools.

The Los Angeles Times Schmerelson and Franklin.

Voters in Los Angeles also , a $7-billion bond to update and improve school infrastructure and technology, according to projections by the Los Angeles Times and others. The measure had about 71 percent support in “semiofficial” results posted Wednesday.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Voters in Los Angeles , a $7 billion bond to update and improve school infrastructure and technology, according to projections by the Los Angeles Times and others. The measure had about 71 percent voter support in “semiofficial” results posted Wednesday.

The measure will raise property taxes on residents of Los Angeles Unified School District, with buy buses, air conditioners, computers and other technology and make improvements to school buildings.

“The students are the real winners today, this victory is theirs,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a . “Because of voter support, and the support of labor, business and community leaders, more students will get access to safe and updated schools and learning technology.”

Approval for the $7 billion borrowing reversed a string of defeated attempts by LA Unified to raise additional revenue, including a $500 million parcel tax overwhelmingly rejected by voters in 2019.

The new bond measure is structured to keep residents’ school tax rate about the same as it is now as they pay for Measure RR and previously passed bonds, according to the . The annual payment will be $140 per $100,000 of assessed property value, which will start to taper off in 2034.

Supporters of the measure were optimistic in the runup to Election Day because the last time a similar proposition passed was in 2008 —��when Democrats were energized to turn out for presidential candidate Barack Obama, according to the . Democrat Joe Biden captured 71.4 percent of the vote in L.A. County vs. Donald Trump’s 26.7 percent in the still-undecided presidential race, according to the county clerk’s office.

The proposition needed 55 percent support to pass.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

A strong majority of the New Mexico electorate greenlit bonds for education infrastructure in Tuesday’s election, according to posted Wednesday by the New Mexico Secretary of State’s office.

Sixty-five percent of voters, or 522,057 people, chose “yes” for Bond Measure C, one of three statewide bond propositions that passed this year. A record-breaking number of people cast ballots across New Mexico in 2020.

The education-related measure will channel roughly $156.3 in capital improvement funding to public higher education institutions, tribal schools and schools for the visually and hearing-impaired.

Lawmakers have already how the money will be spent, including $5.3 million for dining hall construction at the state-run New Mexico School for the Deaf and $1.4 million for a science building at Navajo Technical University, the country’s largest tribal college in the country, among other projects.

Two years ago, New Mexico voters also easily approved three other education-related bond measures that provided $150 million for improvements at state colleges, tribal schools and municipal libraries; new school buses and air conditioning for existing buses; and new books, electronics and broadband upgrades for K-12 public schools.

That same year, a judge that the state was failing its children by not providing adequate public schools funding. Advocates hailed the decision “as a ‘landmark’ ruling that could have implications for underfunded education systems around the country,” HuffPost reported.

In New Mexico, one in four kids live in poverty, according to a from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. An overwhelming 76 percent of fourth-graders in the state lack reading proficiency and 79 percent of eighth-graders aren’t proficient in math — numbers that are 10 to 12 percentage points higher than the national average and which have barely improved over the last decade.

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Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate whose seat was widely seen as endangered, won reelection to a fifth term —��a crucial victory for Republicans as they seek to retain control of the Senate.

Collins won the race after securing 51 percent of the vote. Her Democratic challenger, Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, trailed well behind her, coming in second place with 42.5 percent. Before Election Day, polls projected a much closer contest.

Her reelection could have major implications for federal education policy. Beyond being a blow to Democratic hopes of landing the majority, Collins is a member of the Senate education committee. Retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, is currently the committee chairman, leaving the position up for grabs among senior GOP members.

“Let me say what an extraordinary honor it is to represent the great state of Maine and to know that I will have the opportunity to serve all of Maine for the next six years,” Collins said during a speech to supporters on Wednesday.

It’s an honor to represent the great state of Maine and to know that I have the opportunity to serve ALL of Maine for the next 6 years.

— Susan Collins for Senator (@SenSusanCollins)

Throughout the campaign, Gideon lobbed aggressive attacks on Collins for voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual misconduct decades ago while in high school. Collins was t Justice Amy Coney Barrett, arguing that the process was being conducted too close to the election.

I just received a very gracious call from conceding the race.

— Susan Collins for Senator (@SenSusanCollins)

In an article entitled, , The Atlantic reported Wednesday: “Collins ran on her independence, and her seniority. She reminded Mainers that she had delivered billions of dollars to the sparsely populated state over the years, and that if the voters sent her back to the Senate, she could chair the Appropriations Committee, and deliver untold billions more.”

Arizona voters appear poised to pass a tax that would raise nearly $1 billion for teachers and other school staff by imposing a 3.5 percent “surcharge” on incomes of more than $250,000 for single taxpayers and $500,000 for couples. With 85 percent of the state’s votes counted Wednesday afternoon and Proposition 208 ahead 52.6-47.4, the Associated Press predicted the ballot question would succeed.

The money will fund pay increases for teachers and other school personnel, teacher hiring and training, and other initiatives to boost Arizona’s educator corps. The funds will likely be available starting in 2022.

“Voters will have sealed the deal on something that no legislator has had the courage to do, no governor has had the courage to do,” Arizona Education Association President Joe Thomas .

The measure has its roots in the teacher walkouts of 2018. Photos of the state Capitol awash in a sea of educators, protesting stagnant wages in now-iconic #RedForEd T-shirts, went viral, sparking walkouts and protests elsewhere.

Frustrated that the Republican-dominated state government would not consider returning education funding to pre-recession levels, the movement’s backers vowed to take their case directly to the people. In the process, they helped energize a wave of Democratic voters, who turned out in 2018 and 2020 in larger numbers than before.

The Invest in Education Act, intended to create a dedicated source of revenue to address those concerns, was supposed to be on Arizona ballots in 2018, but a district court judge agreed with opponents who said the written description to be provided to voters lacked some specifics. In August of this year, the state Supreme Court disagreed, placing it on the 2020 ballot.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

For months, the nation’s education leaders and advocates have pinned their hopes for another pandemic relief package with substantial funding for schools on changing leadership in Washington.

But the outcome of the presidential contest is unclear at this point, and hopes that the Democrats would take control of the Senate are fading. As a result, some experts are scaling back their expectations.

“Schools urgently need additional federal aid to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, whether they’re educating students in person or remotely,” said Carissa Moffat Miller, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “Whatever the final outcome of the congressional and presidential elections, we urge leaders to come together and reach a bipartisan solution quickly.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell provided some reasons for optimism Wednesday morning in a following his own comfortable re-election in Kentucky, calling the passage of another relief package before the end of the year “job one.” He said he is now willing to consider funding for state and local governments, a key priority for Democrats who want to protect schools from cuts due to recession-induced belt tightening.

“We need another rescue package,” McConnell said. “Hopefully, the partisan passions that prevented us from doing another rescue package will subside with the election. It’s a possibility we will do more for state and local governments.”

Phyllis Jordan, editorial director for FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University, said his comment “sounds like he’s willing to budge on his past opposition.”

McConnell added that Republicans haven’t been in favor of state and local funding because it’s unclear if aid gets to those who really need it and he doesn’t want states to cover up issues such as pension debt “that they’ve created for themselves.” But with the virus still raging, he said, “the need is there and we need to sit down and work this out.”

Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director for advocacy and governance at the AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said schools shouldn’t have had to wait for the election for more aid.

“That is what leadership is supposed to do, and that is what leadership should have been doing,” she said, adding that if Joe Biden wins the White House, “We have to see if Mitch McConnell without a Trump is any different.”

Close races

As of Wednesday evening, the Republicans had 48 seats secured, while the Democrats had 45. There was still no clear winner in the North Carolina race between incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis and Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, even though Tillis declared victory Tuesday night.

In Michigan, incumbent Democrat Gary Peters was trailing Republican challenger John James by less than a percentage point with 96 percent of precincts reporting. In Georgia, both of the state’s tSenate seats could end up in runoffs, with incumbent Republican David Perdue holding a slim majority of votes with results still being counted, and Republican Kelly Loeffler, a member of the education committee, headed to a runoff with Democrat Raphael Warnock.

But in Maine, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican member of the education committee who could be in line to be chair if the GOP retains control, ultimately defeated Democrat Sara Gideon.

‘Funding to safely reopen’

The last relief bill, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, passed in March. While education officials said the funding helped cover the initial costs of implementing distance learning, revamping school meal programs, and sanitizing buildings, they need to continue those efforts, particularly those aimed at students who’ve lost the most ground during school closures.

In a Monday, Danny Carlson, the director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of Elementary School Principals, suggested a few possible scenarios. If Republicans retain control of the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., could agree to a smaller package than she has been pushing for in recent months. The House, for example, passed a $2.2 trillion package in early October that included more than $182 billion for K-12 schools, but the Senate never considered it.

Meanwhile Senate Republicans have to pass a “skinny” bill that included less than $100 billion for schools along with private school choice provisions and conditions that tied funding to reopening schools for in-person learning. But Democrats haven’t gone along with them.

If Democrats end up controlling the Senate, Carlson added, Pelosi could wait until January to secure a larger package — more in the $3 trillion range. But even then, Democrats would not have the 60 votes needed to pass.

In a letter Sunday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — who has been negotiating with Democrats on a package that exceeds the GOP’s plan — Pelosi said Democrats were still waiting on an answer from the White House on several compromise details, including “funding to safely reopen our schools with separation, ventilation, sanitation, and more funding for teachers and support staff.”

But she also that she would likely use the budget reconciliation process to finalize a package. With that procedure, certain committees in the House write bills with specific funding targets and the budget committee combines them into one large bill.

“But if the Democrats don’t win a Senate majority, reconciliation won’t be as easy as she hoped,” Jordan said. “So, while it’s hard to handicap it until all the votes are counted, I’d say there is some chance for a bill during the lame duck session.”

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Voter turnout among young Americans has long been lackluster, but early data suggest a substantial uptick in civic participation this time around as the pandemic pushed an unprecedented wave of early voting.

Even before Election Day, some 10 million people 18 to 29 years old cast early or absentee ballots, according to data from . To be clear, the data are part of a larger trend: More than 100 million people across all age groups made their voices heard before Election Day, putting the 2020 election on track to shatter voter turnout records.

What’s that mean for the outcome of the presidential race, once we know it? In several key states, youth turnout, which favors Democrats, could be a major boon for Joe Biden.

NEW – YOUTH TURNOUT IN BATTLEGROUNDS: Our early estimate of aggregate youth turnout for 11 battleground states suggests that nearly half of all eligible young people (47-49%) cast ballots. In many of those states, Biden’s youth advantage may be decisive.

— CIRCLE (@CivicYouth)

One early-voting standout was Texas. Two days before Election Day, more than 1.3 million Texans 18 to 29 cast early or absentee ballots. Why’s that such a huge deal? Well, just 1.2 million Texans in that age group voted in 2016, according to CIRCLE. That includes early, absentee and Election Day votes combined.

Youth voters also make up a bigger share of the total ballots cast this time around. Four years ago, young people cast just 6 percent of early and absentee ballots in Texas. But this year, that percentage more than doubled to 13 percent.

It’s not just Texas. In 13 states, young people comprised a larger share of early voters than they did ahead of Election Day in 2016, according to an Oct. 29 data analysis by CIRCLE.

By Wednesday, data further bolstered predictions that youth turnout could be a major player in deciding the still too-close-call election between Biden and President Donald Trump. CIRCLE’s estimates suggested that the aggregate youth voter turnout in 11 key battleground states fell somewhere between 47 and 49 percent. The states include Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. As election officials continue to count ballots in some of those crucial states, CIRCLE predicts that youth turnout could jump to between 51 and 53 percent.

That’d be a major change from just four years ago. In 2016, CIRCLE estimates that between 42 and 44 percent of young people made their voices heard in the equally close race between Trump and Hillary Clinton, suggesting a 10 percentage-point jump in turnout this year among voters 18 to 29.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Texas Democrats woke to an especially hard set of headlines this morning. The electoral “blue wave” many had predicted failed to wash over the state, despite record spending by supporters, massive voter turnout, momentum from the flipping of a dozen seats in the state House of Representatives in 2018 and political intel suggesting that the nine more needed to gain control of the lower chamber were within reach.

Rubbing salt in their wounds: The 2021 Legislature will have a Republican majority during the upcoming high-stakes, once-in-a-decade redistricting.

In fact, while some races have yet to be called, The it’s likely the split in the House will be essentially what it was during the last legislative session, in 2019: 83-67.

That presumptive majority will have its hands full. In addition to redrawing the state’s electoral map, House members of both parties will be hard-pressed to protect 2019’s historic and bipartisan school finance reform. Without a very large injection of federal stimulus funding — uncertain, to say the least — lawmakers will be trying to figure out how to keep the teacher pay raises and increases in classroom funding that both parties deemed long overdue.

Republicans, fearful of cutting funding for K-12 schools? Yes. Traditional school districts are typically the heart of the large, rural — and solid red — House districts. Accordingly, their elected representatives are very protective of them, not least because they are also often a community’s largest employer.

A decade ago, in the last recession, lawmakers cut $5 billion in school funding. As they failed to restore it, property taxes shot up, leaving Texans across the political spectrum wondering why, even as their levies went up, their classrooms just got more crowded.

The price tag for last year’s school finance reform: $6.5 billion.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Republican Julie Yamamoto, a teacher and principal who recently retired after a 32-year career in education, won a commanding victory Tuesday over her Democratic opponent in a race for the Idaho state House.

While Yamamoto and challenger Rebecca Yamamoto Hanson diverged on issues such as whether to allow local-option sales taxes, they aligned on others, including the need to —��Idaho currently relies on bi-annual supplemental levies —��and for greater bipartisanship in upcoming legislative sessions.

Both candidates also happen to share the same last name and Japanese ancestry, but are not related.

Yamamoto, the sister of a local county clerk, was the only candidate in the southwest region of the state to defeat an incumbent candidate in the primary. She second-term Republican state Rep. Jarom Wagoner by 623 votes in the June primary.

The Idaho Elections Department Tuesday night, reporting Yamamoto with a 36-percentage point lead.

Schools will be a top priority for Yamamoto as she advances to the state House in Boise.

“I believe all Idahoans want an economically vibrant state and education system,” she .

Yamamoto is one of the 25 former educators included in The 74’s roundup of ex-teachers positioned to win state-level seats this Election Day. Check out the full cohort here.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Ballot measures to lower the voting age in California’s Bay Area went in separate directions on Election Night, according to local media. San Francisco Ballot Proposition G, which would have permitted 16-year-olds to participate in municipal elections, lost by a slim margin, while Oakland’s Measure QQ passed, allowing students the same age to cast ballots in local school board races.

Just over half of San Franciscans rejected Proposition G, the reported overnight. That makes the margin of defeat even tighter than in 2016, when an identical proposal was voted down by 4 percent. A similar statewide referendum, Proposition 18, which might have enfranchised 17-year-olds in primary campaigns if they were due to turn 18 before the subsequent general election, .

A win in San Francisco would have represented a significant milestone in the nationwide push to lower the voting age. Nearby Berkeley, California, already adopted such a measure, while several suburbs of Washington, D.C., have taken similar steps since 2013.

The activists behind such campaigns, along with some political scientists, believe that encouraging high schoolers to participate in the democratic process could turn them into more engaged citizens later in life. Opponents (such as the San Francisco Chronicle, to vote against Proposition G) argued that it would be inconsistent with the higher minimum ages required to smoke or join the military.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��

Centennial State residents have approved Proposition EE, a measure that could turn revenue from increased taxes on smoking products into pandemic relief for K-12 schools, and preschool for the state’s 4-year-olds beginning in 2023.

The proposal easily Tuesday night with just over 68 percent of voter approval. It’s set to go into effect in January, at which point it’s projected to start generating $87.4 million in additional tax revenue over its first six months. Colorado legalized recreational marijuana use in 2014 and last year in revenue from cannabis sales.

Fans of Proposition EE hope that it curtails substance abuse across the state, including teen vaping: Colorado has one of the nation’s of the practice, and it isn’t subject to the same statewide taxes as smoking. Critics, on the other hand, worry that the measure will punish low-income tobacco users.

Gov. Jared Polis, an early childhood education proponent, threw behind the proposal, inviting education, business and health care leaders to the table before presenting the ballot proposition to voters. The state’s teachers union the measure.

Polis celebrated the win Tuesday night, telling the press that it reflected “Republicans, independents, Democrats coming together around health and around kids.”

Health-related groups tried and failed to pass a similar rule in 2016, which wouldn’t have funded education but would have raised taxes on tobacco products — something that, until now, hadn’t happened in Colorado since 2004. Unlike that thwarted measure, Proposition EE will apply to vaping, and it will institute a $7 minimum price for a pack of cigarettes.

Discount tobacco manufacturers didn’t take kindly to that last demand.

“This is a carve-out for basically one company,” Michelle Lyng, a spokeswoman for A Bad Deal for Colorado No on EE, Colorado Public Radio. She was referring to Altria, one of the world’s biggest tobacco producers, which she pointed out stands to benefit from the minimum-price clause.

Altria spent $16 million fighting the proposed 2016 measure. This time around, the company doled out $380,000 lobbying for Proposition EE.

While Lyng and other opponents have questioned whether taxes collected through the rule will make it through to their purported destination — the bill’s language is flexible — supporters hope that lawmakers, including the governor, stick to their promise.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES: See our full coverage of the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools following Election Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for The 74 Newsletter. 

Republican incumbent Elsie Arntzen will hold onto her position as Montana superintendent of public instruction, according to the Associated Press and the .

Arntzen won with about 52 percent of the vote. Her opponent, Melissa Romano, earned 44 percent of votes.

The race was a rematch of 2016 when Arntzen beat Romano . After the defeat, Romano returned to the classroom and was in 2018. Romano pledged during the campaign to advocate for public preschool if she won and would work closely with the legislature to improve education in the state.

Arntzen is also a former educator and served in the state legislature for .

Asked in a debate what she had done to help schools adjust to the coronavirus crisis, Arntzen pointed to professional development to prepare educators to teach online. Arntzen Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, for allegedly not consulting her before announcing a mask mandate for schools and allocating $75 million in coronavirus relief to schools. Bullock’s office has disputed those claims. Bullock, who was term-limited, for the U.S. Senate this week to incumbent Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican.

Arntzen supports school choice and “has attended pro-school-choice rallies and voted for school choice policies as a legislator,” the Billings Gazette reported. School choice has been top of mind recently, with a case out of Montana reaching the Supreme Court earlier this year. In that case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, a 5-4 conservative majority found that states could not exclude religious institutions from participating in programs that subsidize private school tuition.

Before Arntzen was elected four years ago, the position was held by Democrats for straight.

Libertarian also ran and earned about 4 percent of the votes.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES:��See our full coverage of��the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools��following Election��Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for��The 74 Newsletter.��