Anyone who has tuned in to the real-life drama produced by our School Board in recent years should be familiar with the divisiveness, polarization and often-harsh discourse created by the increasing politicization of public education in Florida.
Now, state lawmakers – who have spent the past four years embracing some of the most low-brow, backwards-thinking and unnecessarily antagonistic education legislation in the nation – want to make a bad situation worse.
They’ve put Amendment 1 on the Nov. 5 ballot, asking voters statewide to make school board elections partisan, which would require candidates to disclose their party affiliations.
You probably haven’t heard much about Amendment 1, which has been overshadowed by the more publicized and controversial proposed amendments pertaining to abortion rights and the legalization of recreational marijuana use.
But if Amendment 1 gets the 60-percent or more needed to pass, the impact will be felt throughout the state, enabling a minority of a community’s voters to elect local school boards.
“It’s a terrible idea,” School Board Vice Chair Peggy Jones, who has devoted five decades of her life to public education, said last week. “We shouldn’t politicize decisions about our children’s education. School boards need to work together, not take positions based on party doctrine.
“Besides, it’s not like people don’t already know the candidates’ party affiliations,” she added.
“They either read about in news stories or, if it matters to them, look it up.”
Florida is one of 41 states that don’t allow partisan school board elections.
Supporters of the proposed amendment, however, say partisan school board elections will enhance transparency – by providing voters with more information about candidates – and align with other local races.
Among the amendment’s proponents here are the local Moms For Liberty chapter and at least two of their three allies on the School Board, Jackie Rosario and Kevin McDonald. Gene Posca didn’t respond to an email seeking comment last weekend.
“Voting yes on Amendment 1 allows candidates to have a party affiliation next to their name on the ballot,” Rosario wrote in her emailed response to Vero Beach 32863 last weekend. “It has nothing to do with how school board members work and serve their community.
“Keep in mind, school board members never make partisan decisions based on red or blue,” she added. “We vote red, white and blue.”
If only that were true …
Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many examples of Rosario and the Moms – who say they don’t partner with government, particularly the one in Washington, but haven’t hesitated to embrace every state mandate since their founding in our county on New Year’s Day 2021 – taking positions that are clearly politically motivated and aligned with a partisan agenda.
In fact, Rosario welcomed an endorsement from Governor Ron DeSantis in her successful 2022 campaign for a second term, even though the state constitution prohibits partisan school board races, and she did not criticize him for targeting Jones for electoral defeat last summer.
Amendment 1’s flaws, however, go far beyond inviting to school board elections the partisan rancor, hostile rhetoric, blatant hypocrisy and negative campaigning we see in other political races.
Yes, partisan school board elections would give voters a better idea of what they can expect from candidates.
But at what cost?
The amendment’s backers are in no hurry to remind you that, because Florida is a closed-primary state, adopting partisan elections would require school board candidates to identify with political parties – unless they’re running with no affiliation – then go through the primary process, which allows only voters registered with that particular to participate.
Meaning: In Republican-dominated counties such as ours, where Democratic Party and no-party-affiliation (NPA) candidates are scarce, nearly half of the registered voters may have no voice in electing school board members.
Non-Republicans do have the option of temporarily changing their party affiliation, of course, and it does happen in relatively small numbers for some races, as was the case with the sheriff’s contest last summer.
But Democrats (23.4 percent), NPA voters (22.1 percent) and members of other parties (3.2 percent) shouldn’t be required to endure such a conflict of conscience to cast a meaningful ballot in school board elections, merely because Republicans (51.3 percent) hold a slight majority in the county’s electorate.
Currently, all of the county’s 120,600 registered voters have a say in who sits on our School Board. If the amendment passes, however, nearly 59,000 of them would be shut out of an all-Republican election.
That should bother you. After all, these are our neighbors, and it’s their school district, too. Many of them have children whose futures could be impacted by board policies and decisions.
And if that’s not troubling enough: Approving Amendment 1 also would raise the possibility that bogus write-in candidates will enter school board races with the sole purpose of closing primaries.
We saw such a despicable tactic last summer, when Keith Ridings – an unknown 25-year-old political nobody – admitted that he filed to run as a write-in candidate to close the District 5 County Commission primary in a failed attempt to help Tracey Zudans unseat Laura Moss.
You can be sure we’ll see the same strategy employed in School Board races here, if Florida voters approve the amendment.
As Board Chair Teri Barenborg said: “I’ve been a Republican my whole life, but, apparently, I’m not Republican enough for some people.”
Barenborg actually benefited from her party affiliation in her first campaign in 2018, winning a November runoff in District 4 with the backing of the local Republican machine, which got involved in the race after Mara Schiff – a proud progressive Democrat – won the District 1 seat in the August primary.
Until then, school board races here had been mostly nonpartisan. But Schiff’s victory awakened the local Republican leadership.
Not that Schiff, a college professor, rocked any boats during her four-year term: She often voted with her Republican colleagues, especially when she shared the dais with Barenborg, Jones and Brian Barefoot, a former Indian River Shores mayor who enjoyed a wildly successful career in the financial world and was elected to the board in 2020.
If anything, the board’s discussions were enhanced by the diverse viewpoints presented by its members, as their interactions and decisions were focused solely on the best interests of students.
Barring a change in the county’s demographics, though, passing Amendment 1 would make it extremely unlikely someone with Schiff’s political leanings would get elected here anytime soon.
On the rare occasion when a non-Republican is on the ballot, the amendment would let voters see a “D” or “NPA” next to the candidate’s name and look elsewhere, without knowing or caring if the candidate is better qualified than the “R” candidates.
“Amendment 1 politicizes education by limiting dissent, dialogue and debate about education issues on local school boards,” Schiff wrote in response to an emailed request for comment. “It’s all about towing party lines to curry political favor, which has no place on school boards.”
Barefoot and David Dyer, who defeated DeSantis-appointee McDonald in the August election, joined Barenborg and Jones in opposing the amendment.
Barefoot, a lifelong Republican who has often donated to party causes, called it a “stupid idea” and wondered aloud why state legislators would want to disenfranchise voters in school board races.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “They have to know that, at some point, the tables will turn and they won’t be in charge.”
Dyer, an island resident who retired in 2015 after a successful run as a retail executive with some of the most-recognized apparel companies in the world, said school boards shouldn’t be partisan.
“I know these are very political times,” Dyer said, “but I’ve always believed that education is the one area where you don’t want to make decisions for political reasons.”
Sadly, it is.
