Education Law

School boards and the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage

On August 26, 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified ratification of the 19^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting the right to vote for women.  BoardBuzz celebrates this anniversary and the millions of women who campaigned for suffrage. 

Did you know that Kentucky was the first state to permit suffrage nearly a century earlier and that it granted the right to vote for school boards?  Beginning in 1838, land-owning widows and single women were allowed to vote in school elections.    

Today women are nearly half of school board members ? putting school boards closer to gender parity than state legislatures or other locations of political leadership.  So there is much to celebrate today – and more yet to accomplish.  BoardBuzz believes that school boards will be on the leading edge in the future just as they have been in the past.

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on August 26, 2010 (boomark / email).