School Board Election Services
vote.direct runs school board elections as a service — PTA and PTO boards, private and charter school boards, booster clubs and student government — from $199 for a digital election of up to 100 voters, covering the ballot build, the roster, the notices, the reminders, the count, and a result certificate for your minutes.
This is for the boards a school community elects for itself. A trustee seat on a public school district board is a government election, administered by your county or state elections office on the public ballot under state election law; vote.direct does not run government elections and cannot place a candidate on one.
All managed elections · Give us 10 days before ballots open
What we do for a school board election
The same scope table we publish for every managed election, with what each row actually means when the electorate is a parent body. The last three rows stay with your board, and they stay there on purpose.
| Task | Who | In a school election |
|---|---|---|
| Ballot build | vote.direct | Officer slate, bylaws amendments and budget questions on one ballot, in the order your bylaws put them. |
| Roster load and dedupe | vote.direct | School lists arrive with two parents on one address and a year of bounces. We reconcile before ballots go out. |
| Notice drafting and send | vote.direct | The notice your bylaws require, on the days they require, to the members your bylaws define. |
| Reminder cadence | vote.direct | Reminders land in the gaps of a school day — after drop-off and after dinner — not at two in the morning. |
| Voter support inbox | vote.direct | Parents email us when a link will not open. Your secretary hears about it only if it is a roster problem. |
| Quorum monitoring | vote.direct | We watch it daily against the threshold in your bylaws and tell you early if the vote is short. |
| Close and tally | vote.direct | Closed on the timestamp in the notice and counted the way your bylaws say — plurality, majority or ranked. |
| Result certificate and audit package | vote.direct | One PDF the secretary attaches to the minutes and the treasurer hands to whoever asks next year. |
| Paper packets (optional) | vote.direct | For the families a school still reaches by mail. $6.00 per packet, counted in the same tally. A mailed ballot counts when it reaches our election address by the close date in your notice — received by, not postmarked by, so nobody has to adjudicate a smudged postmark after the count has started. We work backwards from your close date at kickoff and give you the mail-by date to print on the packet. |
| Inspector of elections (optional) | Either | Rarely asked for by a PTA, and it is an add-on, not part of the base price. We may serve in Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Texas and Arizona, never in California. |
| Nominations and candidate statements | Your board | Your nominating committee runs the nominations. We publish exactly what they hand us. |
| Legal review | Your board | Your counsel reads the bylaws. We follow them; we do not interpret them for you. |
| Adopting election rules | Your board | The board or the membership adopts the rules. We build the ballot to match what was adopted. |
A managed election does not make vote.direct your nominating committee or your lawyer. The fastest way to lose a board is to let it discover that in week two, so it is in the table rather than in a footnote.
What makes a school election different
Six constraints that do not come up in an HOA vote and decide most of the setup here. This is general information, not legal advice; your governing documents and your state may add rules.
A public district board seat is not this
Trustee seats on a public school district board are filled at a government election, administered by your county or state elections office on the public ballot under state election law. vote.direct does not run government elections. If the seat you are filling appears on a county ballot, the county runs it and this page is the wrong page.
Membership decides who votes, not the directory
Most PTA and PTO bylaws give the vote to dues-paid members, not to every parent in the school directory. The list the office exports is a contact list; the electorate is whatever your bylaws describe. We load the one your bylaws describe and show you the difference between the two before ballots go out.
The election is a corporate act
PTAs, PTOs and booster clubs are usually incorporated nonprofits. Federal tax law does not prescribe how you elect a board, but Part VI of the IRS Form 990 instructions asks an organization to disclose its governing body, its members’ governance rights, and whether meetings and written actions were contemporaneously documented. State law and your bylaws do the procedural work. The result certificate and audit package exist to be that contemporaneous documentation.
Source: IRS Form 990 instructions
A charter school board may be a public body
If your state’s open-meeting law reaches your charter school’s board, seats may have to be filled in a noticed public meeting rather than by remote ballot. Ask your counsel before you move a charter board election online. vote.direct can run the ballot; it cannot satisfy a meeting requirement, and it will not tell you that it has.
Students are minors, and the ballot respects that
Student government elections run on school-issued email or on a code the school hands out. Government-ID verification is not offered for a student election: most students do not hold a government ID, and vote.direct will not ask a minor for one.
The school calendar is the real deadline
A ballot that opens in the last week of term reaches nobody. Give us 10 days before ballots open, and pick a voting window that sits inside the term, clear of a holiday and clear of the week report cards go home.
Pricing
Two prices, because there are two products. The service is priced in the menu above — $99 to have it set up and launched, $199 to have it run end to end. The platform on its own is a flat rate per election, and your PTA can pay that and do the work itself.
Run it yourself
Flat rate per election, whatever the ballot asks. Email and SMS invitations included.
| Voters | Per election |
|---|---|
| up to 50 voters | $4.99 |
| 51–100 voters | $9.99 |
| 101–200 voters | $19.99 |
| 201–550 voters | $39.99 |
| 551–1,550 voters | $79.99 |
| Above 1,550 | Talk to us |
What changes when we run it
The same election either way. The difference is whose evening it takes.
| You run it | We run it | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | From $4.99 per election, up to 50 voters | From $199, up to 100 voters |
| Who builds the ballot | Your secretary, in the setup wizard | vote.direct, from your bylaws and notice |
| Who loads the roster | You upload a CSV | We load it, dedupe it and flag the addresses that will bounce |
| Notices and reminders | You send them from the dashboard | We draft them, schedule them and send them |
| Where parents email when it goes wrong | Your PTA inbox | Our support inbox |
| Who closes and counts | You, on the date you set | We do, on the date in the notice |
| Result certificate and audit package | Included | Included |
Questions school boards ask
Tell us the date and hand it over
Send the bylaws, the roster and the slate, and we take it from there — from $199 for a digital election of up to 100 voters. We need 10 daysbefore ballots open.