In the fall of 2025 school board elections, Arts Ed NJ launched Vote Arts Ed, a focused mini-campaign designed to strengthen arts education advocacy at the local level by empowering community members to engage directly with school board candidates. Rather than relying on our centralized outreach model to reach candidates like in previous years, we piloted a distributed, community-led approach, equipping local champions with tools, templates, and support to run district-specific School Board Surveys and related engagement activities.
The goal was twofold:
- To provide voters with clear, accessible information about where candidates stood on arts education.
- To ensure that candidates themselves entered office better informed about arts education policy, funding, and impact.
⛰️ The Challenge ⛰️
School board elections are often low-information races with outsized consequences for arts education, equity, and student opportunity. While Arts Ed Now had previously run statewide school board surveys with significant reach, we wanted to test a new model—one that:
- Built local ownership of advocacy efforts
- Strengthened district-level relationships
- Reduced barriers for community members who wanted to take action but lacked time or technical infrastructure
At the same time, the political climate around education—especially our focus of arts programming—had become increasingly polarized, making thoughtful, values-driven engagement even more critical.
The Approach:
🧗Local Champions, Shared Tools 
11 local champions across New Jersey signed up to lead School Board Survey efforts in their own districts. These champions represented parents, educators, and arts advocates who were already trusted voices in their communities.
- Burlington Township School District
- Hamilton Township School District
- Haddonfield School District
- Metuchen Borough School District
- Morris Hills Regional School District
- Passaic Valley Regional School District
- South Orange-Maplewood School District
- Trenton City School District
- Washington Township School District
- West Morris Regional High School District
- Woodland Park Borough School District
- Customizable survey templates
- Outreach language and distribution tools
- Tracking and reporting guidance
- Communications support for publishing and sharing results
- Each champion adapted the tools to meet local needs—some focused on survey distribution, others paired the survey with community conversations or public events.
Champion Spotlight: Katy Broadhead Cullen 📣
South Orange–Maplewood School District
Katy Broadhead Cullen led the Vote Arts Ed effort in the South Orange–Maplewood School District, using the School Board Survey as both a voter education tool and a candidate learning experience.
“The value of the School Board Survey goes beyond the transparency that it provides voters. The survey is an opportunity for candidates to reflect upon their own arts experiences and gain knowledge of policies that affect arts education, ensuring that participants will join the school board better prepared to support the arts in the district they serve.”
Katy’s leadership emphasized the educative power of the survey itself, reframing it not just as a questionnaire, but as foundations that help shape how future board members think about arts education before they ever take office.
📣 Champion Spotlight: Heather Whitcraft 📣
Washington Township School District
In Washington Township, Heather Whitcraft expanded the Vote Arts Ed model by connecting it to her planned local roundtable conversation, creating space for community dialogue alongside the survey.
Heather and her team:
- Distributed the School Board Survey locally
- Convened community members for in-person discussion
- Published and shared survey results publicly
- Documented the effort with photos and written summaries
Following the election, Heather reflected on the impact:
“At least one known supporter has been re-elected. The other one voted in did fill out the survey claiming support. The last seat is still up in the air between two arts ed supporters… We can all breathe easier knowing the arts will be protected.”
Her comments underscore a key campaign insight: success is not only measured by who wins, but by how prepared communities are to hold leaders accountable once elected.
Looking Ahead 🔎
The Vote Arts Ed mini-campaign demonstrated that a scalable, community-powered advocacy model can deepen engagement, strengthen arts education policy conversations, and prepare both voters and candidates for more effective governance.
We plan to build on this pilot by expanding the local champion network, refining tools based on feedback, and continuing to center arts education as essential to equity, civic life, and student success.
Stay engaged with YOUR local school board elections into 2026. If your election is still coming up, you can still run your own local survey and engage in this campaign!