>Then you get to affect what an entire generation learns

I don't think you've ever been on a school board.

In a lot of places, there are federal and state standards that effectively dictate what children have to know. So if that state test or whatever has no relativity theory on it, but lots of low end classical mechanics problems, then guess which one the high schools in your district will spend pretty much 100% of the time teaching? Everyone from the school board members, to the school teacher, to the high schools themselves will be evaluated, publicly, when the results of those tests are released. (Some schools may even be taken over by the state or shut down if the numbers are too poor.)

Most places they generally don't take chances on spending class time on topics outside those the tests focus on, it's just too risky the way most states have structured their laws. I wish I knew some kind of a way to push back against test centric thinking in education, but it's too ingrained and there's too much riding on it. At the end of the 12 years the kids have to take the ACT in most places, and heaven help you if little Jane or Johnny doesn't do well enough on it.

I always thought that if you really want to influence what the next generation learns, you should join the company that makes the tests, not the school board.

Actually there is a single school board in Texas that saw fit to mandate children's science textbook (for the entire country) to include "creationism and intelligent design" (i.e. God) together with evolutionary theory.

And like any other positions of real power, you need money, some campaigns for school board are multi-million dollar election campaigns.