School board elections are one of the highest-leverage, lowest-participation decisions in Delaware. Turnout is low. Margins are small. In some cases, candidates run without a real contest. When voters do not engage, leadership is not selected. It is decided by default. When governance is decided by default, the system performs accordingly.

It’s clear that when residents fail to vote, it can have consequences — ones that most people recognize, but rarely connect to the ballot box. It shapes whether schools are focused on clear priorities or pulled in competing directions. It determines whether resources are invested in what improves student outcomes or spread thin. Those decisions show up in real ways: in the preparedness of students, the confidence of families, and the strength of Delaware’s workforce and economy.

In 2024, fewer than 5% of eligible voters cast ballots in Delaware school board elections, even as concern about outcomes, funding, and district leadership remained high across every sector of public life. The disconnect between what communities demand and how they participate is one of the most significant, and most solvable, barriers to progress in our state.

Data from the 2026 Delaware Opportunity Outlook reinforce this disconnect. A majority of Delawareans believe school board members have a direct influence on the quality of K–12 education, yet far fewer report understanding how improvement efforts are being carried out, or how decisions are made at the local level. In other words, people believe boards matter, but are not consistently using the one mechanism they have to influence who serves and how decisions are made.

What governing actually requires 

A strong board member asks clear, outcome-focused questions and expects specific answers. They connect decisions to priorities, work through tradeoffs with colleagues, and ensure decisions are understood before the board moves forward. They listen for whether information reflects progress or activity, and press for clarity when it does not.

These are not intuitive responsibilities. They require preparation. School board governance is often treated as something individuals can step into without training, but these are complex roles that involve setting priorities, interpreting data, making tradeoffs, and ensuring decisions lead to results over time.

The Delaware Opportunity Outlook suggests that this is not how the role is widely understood. While Delawareans recognize that school boards influence the quality of education, far fewer identify training and professional preparation as essential. 

That gap has direct consequences. As the state advances new priorities, the effectiveness of those efforts will depend on whether local board members are prepared to implement them, monitor progress, and make results visible.

Delaware’s moment 

Delaware has established a clear direction for public education: defined priorities, a statewide literacy commitment, and a funding reform that will place significant new responsibilities on local boards. Plans set direction. Boards determine whether those plans turn into results.

What happens next will not be determined by those plans alone. It will be determined by how effectively school boards translate those priorities into decisions, how consistently they track progress, and whether they make results visible to the public.

Candidate evaluation

Evaluating a candidate is straightforward: Can they name a small number of district priorities and explain why those matter? Can they describe what data they would review regularly and how they would use it? Can they explain how resources should align to outcomes and what they would do if results do not improve? Candidates who can answer those questions demonstrate an understanding of the role. Those who cannot speak to governance beyond the issues that brought them to the race may find the role more demanding than they anticipated.

Make your voice heard

Voting in a school board election is one of the few places where individual participation has a direct and immediate impact on how the system performs. School board elections are decided by small numbers of voters. Your decision to engage, or not, determines who governs. Choosing not to participate is not neutrality. It is a choice, and it carries the same weight as the vote itself.

Today, a decision will be made about who governs Delaware’s schools. You can be part of that decision, or it will be made without you. Either way, the results will show up in classrooms, in communities, and in the long-term strength of this state.

Find out who is running. Evaluate them on the work the role requires, not only on the positions they hold. Vote, and encourage others to do the same.

For more details about voting in today’s elections, visit First State Educate’s 2026 School Board Elections page.

Read more from Spotlight Delaware

MIAMI (AP) — Two South Florida police officers claim Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s recent action thriller “The Rip” used too many real-life details in its fictionalized narrative, causing harm to the officers’ personal and professional reputations, according to a defamation lawsuit.

Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, sergeants in the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, filed the lawsuit in Miami federal court earlier this month against Artists Equity, a film production company owned by Affleck and Damon. Court filings don’t say how much the officers are suing for, but the civil complaint says they’re seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorney fees, as well as a public retraction and correction.

“The Rip” features Affleck and Damon as South Florida police officers who find millions of dollars inside a house. Parts of the movie were inspired by a real 2016 case, where police found over $21 million linked to a suspected marijuana trafficker in a Miami Lakes home.

An attorney for Artists Equity declined to comment when reached Monday by The Associated Press. But in a March 19 response to the plaintiffs’ demand letter, Leita Walker, an attorney for Artists Equity, wrote that the film does not purport to tell the true story of that incident or portray real people, which had been stated by a disclaimer in the film’s credits.

Although Smith and Santana aren’t named in the film, the lawsuit claims that Santana was serving as the lead detective assigned to the real case, and Smith was the sergeant who supervised the investigative team. The film’s inclusion of real details about the case gives the impression that the characters are based on the plaintiffs, the suit said.

And this, the lawsuit claims, has given friends, family members and colleagues the impression that the plaintiffs committed the criminal acts that appear in the film, which include (SPOILER ALERT) conspiring to steal seized drug money, murdering a supervising officer, communicating with cartel members, committing arson in a residential neighborhood, endangering the lives of civilians, repeatedly violating core law-enforcement protocols and executing a federal agent rather than making an arrest.

Walker wrote in March that the plaintiffs haven’t even identified which particular character is supposed to be based on Smith or Santana, so even if “The Rip” was actually about a real-life narcotics team, there’s no way to connect any of the characters to the plaintiffs.

“The Rip,” directed by Joe Carnahan, debuted in January on Netflix. It’s currently rated 78% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.