I have done some research online but I can’t find a simple definition that I can understand. I am also trying to find out if we have an equivalent word in England since we don’t use the term school district. Can someone explain the difference between a school district and a school board and hoe they work?
35 comments
>A public school district is a geographical unit for the local administration of elementary or secondary schools. It is a special-purpose government entity that can be administered independently or be dependent on the local government, such as a city or county.
A smaller town might have a single school district, while medium-to-large towns or cities would generally have multiple school districts.
A school district is a group of schools ran under one board. It is usually determined by geographic location.
A school district is a collection of schools in a certain geographic location.
It’s the local administrative unit for public (that is, government-run) schools. A lot of the property taxes I pay go directly to the school district. Where I live the school district is independent, which is to say, its own distinct organization and not subordinate to or part of the city or county governments.
School boards are comprised of elected officials who run the school district.
It’s kind of like a town. The school district would be the town, and its ran by the school board or city council. Districts are based on location
School districts are a special kind of government district separate from the regular federal-state-county-municipality system. They obviously deal with the public schools within their boundaries and are also run by a separate governing body (school boards) elected by the people.
School districts are just one kind of special district, there are others that individually deal with things like water, power, sanitation, business improvement, hospitals etc. Not all of these will be popularly elected, many are made up of appointees by the local or state government.
It’s basically turned into gerrymandering, but instead of votes it’s public school funding.
The school district for our suburban city is comprised of one (very large) high school, 3 middle schools, and 11 elementary schools. There is a school district administration with a superintendent at the top. Each school has a principal and other admin positions and also a school nurse, a school SRO, counselors, social workers. The elected school board hires the superintendent plus makes various policy decisions.
There is a wide variety in the sizes of districts. There are huge ones in big cities. There are smaller rural ones. Sometimes they are divided by city and sometimes county. We have districts in our state that serve multiple counties in sparsely populated areas.
To add – generally if you live within the boundaries of a school district, you will go to that district. There is a variety of school choice depending on state and locality. My district does not allow you to choose your school – you go the one you are districted to and they don’t allow students that don’t live within the district. But this varies widely from district to district.
According to wikipedia, England and Wales used to have school districts but they were abolished in the 20th century, and the county/local councils became the local education authorities.
School districts in the US are still separate from the rest of local government. They can be contiguous with a local government’s jurisdiction, but not necessarily, e.g. if you live in Abel County, there might be an “Abel County School District” that administers all of the public schools (remember, in the US a public school is a publicly-funded school, not a private school) in Abel County. Or there might be a “North Abel School District” and a “South Abel School District.” Or if there’s a city in Abel County, it might have its own school district and the rest of the county has its own.
A school board is just the governing body of officials (elected and otherwise) which administer a school district.
a school district describes a sectioned-off geographical area where schools are located. the school board is a group of people who make decisions for the schools in that district. there are 13,800 school districts in the US.
I just looked up a random example. if you go to school in Knoxville Tennessee, your school district is Knox County Schools. There’s an elected group of people on a school board that governs Knox County Schools. if you live in a different school district, there will be a different school board and maybe some different policies regarding schools. if you live in Knox County, you’ll be able to vote for the school board members like any other public office.
The school board is the administrative unit that manages the school district.
It’s an administrative organization that handles the budgeting, curriculum, and rules for schools of a certain area. One town might have its own school district, or there might be a school district that covers several towns. The “school board” is made up of the chairpersons for that school district. They have meetings the way a town council would, discussing matters and holding votes on issues pertaining to the schools that they administrate. Each school has a principal (I guess similar to “headmaster”?), the whole district has a superintendent, and they would report to the school board, which has half a dozen or so elected members.
The curriculum has to conform to state standards, but for the most part the school boards can make independent decisions for their school district, which in turn affects all the schools that they oversee.
So basically its a town wide area that manages schools in that area
School districts are usually divided at the high school level. Which high school you go to is determined by where you live, so they have something like a political boundary drawn on a map. Very similar to how you know if you’re inside of city limits based on lines on a map. Usually there will be several middle schools that feed into one high school, and each of those middle schools will be fed into by several elementary schools.
Each of those levels of school is determined by its own geographic boundary, but the “school district” is the high school one, which is the highest level of compulsory/free public education in the US. So all the middle schools and elementary schools will be a part of the same district.
Each school district is generally self governing, within broad rules set by the state. But for instance one district can have different standards for what year you take biology vs chemistry, and what topics are covered. The governing body of a school district is the school board, led by the superintendent. Because of the importance of this position, the superintendent is a political position voted on by the general public.
This also means that people in the US can have wildly different school experiences. For instance I got 4 years of compulsory sex Ed or related classes and can’t relate to the conversations that happen surrounding the lack of it in the US. My district was unusually thorough. Meanwhile a friend of mine from a different state got an optional week of sex Ed.
It’s a municipal or county level administration that is in charge of running schools within a certain geographic area. States set broad general educational requirements, e.g., 180 days of schooling / year with at least 5 hours of instructions per day, and then the school boards determine actual days of instruction, holidays, spring break, when to close schools due to weather conditions, etc. They also provide more detailed guidance to individual schools as to how to instruct students, and then the principals in those schools implement that guidance on a more granular level.
School board members are elected officials everywhere (as far as I know), and have to run for re-election every 4 years. As a general matter, at least where I’m from, it is not a full time job because the school boards hire a superintendent of schools to implement the board’s agenda. So usually the school board meets once a week or so and usually in the evening to hear from parents, teachers and students.
So you can sort of break it down in to 3 groups in my area in Massachusetts–
Rural. Towns small enough that the school districts are more than one town. So my kid went to school kindergarten-8th grade (ages 5-about 13) in our town. Then at high school, several towns go to one high school (or 2 cuz they also have a vocational high school). Helps consolidate things so they have really great chemistry labs, buildings, ropes courses, counselors, etc, because a single town couldn’t really fund that. There’s LOTS of electives and clubs.
Then there are larger towns or small cities that have one district. Means probably a few elementary schools (k-5 or 6), one or junior highs (7-8) or a middle school (6-8). Then likely everyone goes to the same high schools.
The a big city will have different districts. Too big for just one high school. Different areas of the city will go to different schools.
A School District runs a group of primary and secondary schools that operate in and serve the children of a defined area. This School District receives funds to run the schools primarily from property taxes of properties within the school district. A School District is run by a School Board which is a group of elected officials from the school district put in charge of running the School District, mainly by setting budgets for the schools within the district and hiring a Superintendent of Schools to run the day to day operations of the schools within the district.
You’ve gotten a bunch of mostly-complete responses with a few gaps.
“School district” is used to describe either the organization that manages the public schools in a certain area, or the geographic area where students attend public schools managed by a certain school district.
Example: I live in the town of HokePokeyVille. “HokeyPokeyVille High School is run by the HokeyPokeyVille School District” and “I live within the HokeyPokeyVille School district” are both ways the term could be used.
School district boundaries are usually closely correlated with local government boundaries. A city is usually all part of one school district, with the district’s boundaries matching the city’s boundaries. Less densely populated areas will often share a single school district between multiple local municipalities/ governments.
Generally, school districts are not really relevant to private schools.
A school board is a group of elected people who live within the school district and make decisions on various administrative matters. They are elected in the same process as all of our other government elections. Members of the school board are usually, but not always, either retired teachers or bored/ highly involved parents.
A school district is basically a collection of schools all governed by one local entity. People have mentioned that large cities will have multiple school districts, but I do not find that to be the case in California. San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco each have a single school district which manages all the public schools in their respective cities.
As for what a school district does, it comes up with a common policy for all the schools it manages. For example, in the early days of the pandemic, each school district made its own decision on whether it would close its schools. They also make decisions on curriculum and manage the funding of their schools.
* School district: The local area to which K-12 schools (elementary, middle, high school) belong. A district can be small – one elementary school, say, and one middle/high school – or it can be huge, particularly in cities. The district I teach in is huge, with 10K + students. Each district is funded primarily through property taxes, but impoverished schools get additional help from the state, sometimes most of the help.
Each district has its own policies, educational plans, curriculum. X number of districts make up the state schools. Each state also has its own policiies, educational plans, curriculum. You’re also paid differently from district to district. One district can have a student uniform policy, and another could not, just to give one tiny example. Each state is like an umbrella over all the districts. This is why it’s fruitless to ask questions like “What are schools like in America?” except in a general way.
​
* Board. A school board is the elected governing panel of each district. Well, usually they’re elected. In huge impoverished cities, they’re appointed by the mayor, which imo is yet another reason huge impoverished districts can be so corrupt. In most districts, anyone can run for board if they’re 21 or older. There are no requirements except being a taxpayer in the district and winning the vote. You can be driven out of the board in exceptional cases. Boards have a great deal of power over the district and are technically the ‘boss’ of everyone else, including the Superintendent (the person in charge of the entire district). But the state oversees the board. The federal Department of Education oversees all the states, but only loosely.
A school district is the physical area governed by a school board. In some places a school district may be an entire county or parts of separate counties, or a single township, or a small portion of a town. Often in suburban areas, the school district predates the cities and towns within the school district. For example, the school district that I attended was founded in the 1860s. Over time, the area transitioned from farms to small villages to booming suburbs incorporated in the 1950s and 1960s. The small one room rural schools gave way to larger elementary schools, junior and senior high schools.
School district boundaries can change but typically don’t, unless smaller districts join together to make a larger consolidated district. Often, this is fought by residents, particularly if the schools are in desirable areas. Literally across the river from where I grew up in one village of 8,000 people there were 5 separate elementary districts. (They all fed into one high school, which was its own separate but overlapping district, just to add to the layers of confusion).
The school boards are elected by the district residents to set policy, run the schools, control spending, etc. The day to day operations are run by an administrator or administration team hired by the school board.
It may be relatable to the difference between your standard local schools, Grammar Schools, etc.
In rural areas the “district” typically is the county. If there is a city within the county, the county may also have it’s own district and schools. Special schools like STEM or special needs often are provided by the district if that district has the funds to create such schools.
Just to add to what has already been said, we in the US may also have in a given public school district of a county or city(etc): distinct schools in individual cities/townships or other entities within, Catholic and or other religious/cultural school systems, secular private schools etc. overlaying the nominal public districts. I should add that, at least in my area, you don’t need to be Catholic to be in a catholic school, and a lot of kids are not. Just be able to pay tuition.
[https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/directory/24/birmingham_schools](https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/directory/24/birmingham_schools)
Is it something similar to this? Btw, I don’t live here, I just picked a large UK city as an example.
It’s a grouping of public schools within a single geographic area that are administered by a body known as a school board. These boards in turn are administered by their state’s Department of Education.
The state sets broad guidelines for education, and the boards are free to add or remove aspects of the curriculum or set policies at will so long as they meet the requirements set by the state. Individual schools within the district also have a great degree of freedom regarding policies and curriculums so long as they meet the requirements of their district.
Private schools exist independently of the district system and aren’t bound by the district or the state. They’re administered by either a board of directors or trustees and may willingly enter into an association with other private schools that then assumes a limited role in broad administration that’s similar to a school district but doesn’t have strict geographical borders.
You’ve gotten a lot of good answers so I’ll just give a real life example.
Growing up, we had 6 primary schools that fed into a single middle school. They were all under a single school district.
We had 2 high schools that were fed by middle schools in many many districts. The 2 high schools were in their own school district
And one of the MOST UNFAIR parts of our country is the distribution of funds. A poor, rural community with a small tax base gets terrible funding (and the teachers haveow salaries) while a rich community gets lots of money from their tax base. It’s a terrible system, and unfair.
The area covered by a specific campus.
School districts are organizations defined by geographic boundaries within a state, and the school district is responsible for providing the public education to all children within its geographic area. The details of how their boundaries are determined varies slightly by state, and they don’t always follow precise lines. Generally, a city will have its own school district but smaller towns and cities may share a school district based on county lines. In Indiana, our state Department of Education makes decisions about any changes to the geographic boundaries of school districts.
In general, each district has a school board of elected officials who exercise authority over the superintendent, who is basically the CEO of all the schools. Superintendents are most often appointed by the school board, but they may be elected. They act together to make budgeting and making high-level decisions about the school district such as closing, merging, or making new schools.
School districts tend to be accountable to their state’s Department of Education, and if they’re failing to meet the state’s DoE’s expectations, they may lose some of their decision making power for a period of time. School districts’ funding also primarily comes from a share of the property taxes within their geographic borders.
A school district is a geographic area in which all residents’ children attend a number if schools which share an administrative structure. “District” also refers to the administration itself. This administration is run by the school board, which are officials elected by the residents of that district. They make decisions of policy and funding. And the funding for the district comes from taxing the residents of the district (plus voluntary funds provided by fundraising activities like bake sales and parties and sports ticket sales.)
School administration is kept separate from city, state, and county authority to allow parents to have more local control. They have minimal connection to higher levels of government.
It’s exactly what it sounds like. A group of schools under a locality — usually a city — that share a common oversight administration (school board). So, one school district may have 5 elementary schools (K-5), 3 middle schools (6-8), and a high school (9-12). There may be more or less. Obviously if you’re talking about Chicago, there will be dozens of each of those. But if you’re talking about a rural school district, they may just have one of each.
School Districts are government organizations. Usually a ‘School Board’ of citizens, elected by the voters, are a type of Board of Directors. School Board Members usually aren’t educational professionals, so they aren’t involved in day-to-day operations, which are handled by a School System Superintendent, who usually has some form of Ph.D. or similar.
A school district might cover a different area than a city, or a county. A city might say “we don’t want the county schools, we are forming our own district”.
In areas with low population, the county is usually a school district. In areas with higher population, individuals cities have their own districts. Sometimes, their might be one district for high schools (students age 14-18), and a different one for younger children. Sometimes those two districts will merge into a “Unified” school district.
It’s been 25 years since I was a teacher – ask me anything?
These are all really good explanations of school districts one thing I remember when I was younger and renting apartments is that the apartment complex would always tell us what school district we were in this seemed to be important for young families because they wanted to know if the apartment was going to allow them to send their child to a good school or not so if you are in an area with multiple school districts in that area it was important to know whether the apartment was located in a district that had a good reputation or not
Please forgive my lack of punctuation I’m driving so I’m using voice to text and I don’t know how to do punctuation
A school district is the area that students can live in and go to a specific school, and the administration that handles it.
A school district is a group of schools that are administered together, overseen by a superintendent and a school board elected by those within the district’s boundaries. Sometimes they’re small, say the 3 elementary schools and a middle school in a town. Sometimes they can be large, like the 100’s of schools of a major city. Sometimes they are contiguous with a town, sometimes they may include multiple towns or a county.