There isn't a single right answer to that and I'm not going to suggest there is.

How any organisation operates, be that public or private, is down to the culture of the organisation, and culture comes from people, process, motivation, legislation, and a whole bunch of factors.

If an organisation has a clear mission, is held organisationally accountable in appropriate ways to that mission and makes people feel professionally enriched and valuable, it will attract competent people. And importantly, an organisation full of competent and principled individuals will attract other competent individuals.

On the flip side, if an organisation is subject to decades of mismanagement, has very poor oversight, doesn't reward people for being good at their jobs and in fact rewards the wrong behaviours then exactly the opposite will happen. People who are competent at what they do will either leave or be crushed down, while those who know how to play the bootlicking game will be raised up, and this type of organisation again becomes self-perpetuating.

None of this happens overnight, in either direction. Failure can take years or decades, and so can the reverse.

Better that people vote for metrics than candidates I would suggest, and measure against those. If we gotta vote for questions too, so be it.

In typical fediverse fashion, the users responding to you have no answer so they get stuck on semantics and counter arguing your question rather than the intent.

I genuinely would like a well thought out response to this too. Would merit be someone with many years of teaching experience? Maybe school administration?

Do those things make that person capable of performing board responsibilities? Do those things preclude them from making creepy remarks (I highly suspect they don't)

For the record, the dude here has been on the board for 12 years, which should be more than enough time to learn the necessary skill set to do the job. Doesn't make him less creepy though.

I hear schools are pretty good at giving people these funny things called "tests" to assess an individual's knowledge on a certain subject. Not only are schools good at testing, I hear there is a WHOLE INDUSTRY built on creating and running them.

You know, they could give those to other people too I'll bet! In fact, I'll bet you can use them to qualify doctors, lawyers, barbers, auto mechanics and all sorts of people!

Oh wait, these are politicians. We shouldn't do that to them. I don't know why, but it just feels wrong. Never mind.

Just to be clear, you're arguing that merit/competence can't be accurately judged and therefore should be ignored in favour of popularity ?

As a voter, I have found that there is a significant lacking of useful information to make a decision on. I put in a fair bit of effort and often feel like I have nowhere near enough. And that is how the politicians want it. That way the majority of voters to have very little information of substance to go on. That way they can win on charisma. And they don't have to do anything positive for the voters to move up. They just have to please the political powers in the area to get endorsements, campaign help, and straight up donations so they can move to the next level. But when it comes to school boards. Most won't move to the next level. But they take advantage of the way the system is set up to get elected. They probably even believe that their opinions are the will of the voter, when the voter barely knows anything about their real opinions.