JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – School board elections have become more of a hot topic over the last few years, with the elections becoming more and more partisan.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ school board endorsements proved to hold less weight across the state this time around.
DeSantis endorsed 23 school board candidates in the Aug. 20 primary. Eleven of those candidates lost their races, six of them won, and six others will advance to a runoff in November.
MORE: 2 of 4 DCPS school board races too close to call in Florida primary
In 2022, out of the 30 school board candidates he endorsed, only five lost their elections.
News4JAX spoke with Chris Hand, a government law attorney who served as press secretary for U.S. Senator and former Florida Gov. Bob Graham, about the difference between the two election years.
TELL US: How do you feel about school board elections potentially becoming partisan in Florida again?
“Every election is its own election. The political dynamics in the state and in local communities is different today than it was in 2022 so that’s why it’s hard to compare different election cycles,” Hand said. “I think there probably was some backlash about some of the educational policies that were being pushed, concerns about whether local school districts were going to be encouraged to ban books. I think that was one that had sort of bipartisan reach. Also some concerns about funding in local school districts.”
DeSantis endorsed Tony Ricardo, Melody Bolduc, and Rebecca Nathanson for the school board in Duval County. Ricardo and Bolduc won their respective races while Nathanson lost by a few hundred votes to incumbent Cindy Pearson.
Daniel Cronrath is a political science professor at Florida State College Jacksonville. He said in some ways school boards in Florida are becoming a political ideological battlefield.
“I think Gov. DeSantis and the Florida State Legislature have been very, very transparent. They believe that they want to transform public education in Florida, to roll it back to a point in time which matches their own conservative values,” Cronrath said. “And then, of course, there’s the other large percentage of Florida who just use public education as just that. They are not necessarily Christian. Maybe they’re not. They could be atheists. They could be not attached to any religion at all, and they just want their traditional public school to work for them.”
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There’s also the possibility that Florida voters could make school board elections partisan with Amendment 1, which would reverse a decision voters made in 1998.
MORE | Path to the Polls: Will Amendment 1 turn the school playground into a political battleground?
Cronrath explained the possibility.
“If you have an issue or if you have a candidate, say, for example, even though Florida was decidedly Republican and the legislature was decidedly Republican, Florida voted for Barack Obama twice for president of the United States,” Cronrath said. “So what will the impact of say Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden at the top of the ballot be? What else will impact Amendment 1 with issues like Amendment 3 and Amendment 4 on the ballot that would, of course, legalize recreational marijuana and then constitutionally enshrine a woman’s right to a first-trimester abortion? You know, there are so many different things at play here. However, right now the trend is that things are favoring the more Democratic and the more liberal position, relative to the November election.”
Voter turnout on Tuesday was less than 20% in Duval County. Hand explained how higher voter turnout in November could affect Amendment 1.
“I think by the time you get to November, where there is a much bigger electorate, again, that, you know, that makes it harder to pass something that I think is less likely to be popular, such as Amendment 1,” Hand said. “It’s not as if there is a broad coalition of support behind that, as you say. You know, some members of the Republican Party have expressed support for that. You have not really heard a ton of reciprocal support from the Democratic Party for Amendment 1, and it doesn’t seem like there are a variety of outside groups at this point that are pushing for that, either. So we’ll see what happens.”
School board races in Duval County aren’t over just yet, District 5 was the only district that didn’t have a candidate endorsed by DeSantis, but there will be a runoff to decide that race in November.