Bethany Heintz stood before the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools Board and announced her resignation, saying unresolved issues in the district’s special education department drove her to quit her dream job.

Top students can benefit greatly by being offered the subject early. But many districts offer few Black and Latino eighth graders a chance to study it.

Kurt Marthaller, who oversees school food programs in Butte, Mont., faces many cafeteria-related challenges: children skipping the lunch line because they fear being judged, parents fuming about surprise bills they can’t afford, unpaid meal debts of $70,000 districtwide. But at nearly half of Mr. Marthaller’s schools, these concerns have vanished.

The Native American Community Academy network, which numbers 13 schools in five states, has big plans but faces growing pains.

The board of trustees for the Cypress Fairbanks independent school district in Houston voted 6-1 earlier this month to redact certain chapters in science textbooks, including those about vaccines, human growth, diversity, and climate change.

After taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Granbury ISD board member Courtney Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, was shocked by what she found—and didn’t find.

Public school district leaders from New York City, Berkeley, Calif., and Montgomery County, Md., forcefully defended their actions under Republican attacks like those that had tripped up university presidents.

Katy ISD’s board voted this past fall to require staff to notify parents if their child wants to use a different pronoun or identifies as a different gender.