Amendment Aimed at Making School Board Seats Partisan Fails

Would you want to know if each representative on your local school board voted for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? 

About 55% of Florida voters indicated this week that they would prefer to know the partisan affiliation of each person running for school board. But that was not enough to pass Amendment

1, which would have made school board elections partisan starting in 2026 and would have required candidates to list their political affiliation when running for office. 

Since the amendment failed to pass, despite a hearty endorsement of the Republican Party of Florida, board elections will continue to be held in the same nonpartisan manner as they have been since the late 90s.

Amendment 1 was one of several ballot measures that received a majority of yes-votes from the public, yet didn’t hit the 60% supermajority threshold required to pass and thus enter the state’s constitution. 

Floridians in favor of Amendment 1 felt voters should be given full transparency about a candidate and be provided with all the information necessary to make an informed decision. 

Those opposed to the amendment, however, want schools to remain apolitical. They saw the amendment being a vehicle for driving political wedges between people and diverting attention away from students. 

“School boards are tasked with making certain [that] children are getting the best education available. To accomplish this, party preference plays no role. Whether I’m a Democrat, a Republican or a registered Non-Partisan Affiliation (NPA)…what really matters is whether or not I have the knowledge required to execute the job,” said Mindy Koch, a candidate who ran for the Palm Beach County School Board. Koch lost to her opponent, Gloria Branch, who garnered 53.5% of the vote.

Currently, school board elections in Florida are nonpartisan, meaning candidates do not list their political party affiliation when running. Historically, school board elections in the state were partisan up until 1998, when the passing of Amendment 1 effectively changed board elections to be held in a nonpartisan manner. 

Back when Amendment 11 was passed, there were more Democrats than Republicans in the Florida government, explained Aaron Veenstra, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University who teaches courses in political communication, mass communication and public opinion.

“Republicans in Tallahassee were like ‘we could get people to not vote for Democratic candidates as much, so let’s take these labels off,’” said Veenstra. “You’re still going to have…a Democrat and a Republican on the ballot, but people won’t know which is which.” With this, Republicans hoped they would have a better chance of voters not selecting candidates solely based on their Democratic party affiliation.

Now that the party situation in Florida has changed and Republicans are a solid majority in state government, they pushed for board elections to be partisan once again.

The amendment was supported by State Rep. Spencer Roach, Sen. Tyler Sirios and Sen. Joe Gruters. In April 2023, Sen. Gruters took the floor of the Florida Senate to voice his support for Amendment 1, saying that it would be a move towards “full transparency elections.” 

“Parties engage in these races. There’s no such thing as a non-partisan race anymore. The races are partisan, and the only ones that aren’t informed are being tricked,” said Gruters. “There are games played all the time in these races. And what I’m trying to do is pull the bag off of the voters’ heads.”

However, a resounding concern for Florida voters was how this amendment could impact the way students are taught, especially given the recent changes instituted in public schools across the state by Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

“The overarching changes that [DeSantis] has made to the education system in Florida…personally, I am not a big fan,” said Jacob Rossi, a senior at FAU studying Multimedia Studies. “I feel like making it an issue on the ballot of who should be on school boards along party lines will do more damage to the education system in the state. It’s important to keep bipartisanship, especially in Florida.” 

Voters similarly worried that the material taught to students would also change based on a board member’s political affiliation since they call the shots on school curriculum and policies. This worry was heightened given new laws, such as House Bill 1069, which have restricted what students are permitted to learn. A group of major publishers along with parents and students are suing Florida over that law, which restricts books in school libraries.

“I think history classes would take the biggest impact if we passed [Amendment 1]. I think the way we teach history and what gets taught would take a huge hit,” said Tayia Lombardi, a senior at FAU.

Karen Brill, board chair for Palm Beach County’s District 3, a school board district overseeing West Boynton Beach and Delray Beach,  said it would be better if such races stayed nonpartisan due to her concern that it would disadvantage people who are registered as NPA.

“All registered voters – regardless of their party affiliation – can vote for school board candidates in the primary and general elections,” Brill said in an email.  “If school board elections become partisan, that would create closed primaries. As a result, voters who have no party affiliation would be excluded from the primary elections.”  

Other Palm Beach County School Board members offered a similar view, saying that conducting school board elections in a nonpartisan manner is seen as a pillar of the education system. 

“Our schools, more than any governmental service, should remain a place for everyone. When people run for office, they should do so with the vote of everyone, including in the primaries and the general election,” said Erica Whitfield, a member of Palm Beach County’s District 4, which includes coastal West Palm Beach and Boca Raton.

Some voters, like Jack Meyer, a sophomore studying biology and the secretary of FAU’s chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative group, leaned towards voting in support of the amendment to increase the transparency of school board members to voters. 

“I hope that the indication of political parties of school board members will possibly increase their political neutrality by parents being able to see if they are voting ‘partisan’ on issues,” said Meyer in an email.  

However, others felt as though knowing a board member’s party affiliation would have taken away from the important research needed to be done by voters before they went to the polls. 

“If we’re talking about local school board elections, I think it’s better that we don’t know party affiliation because what [that] does is make you look less into the personality and character of the person you’re electing and just at their party,” said David Linares, a sophomore at FAU studying Political Science. Linares was out on Election Day at a Boca polling location campaigning against Amendment, which would have restored abortion rights in Florida. That amendment also didn’t pass, despite garnering support from 57% of voters.

While voters were largely aware of that amendment in particular as well as Amendment 3, which would have legalized recreational marijuana but only won 55% of the vote, many other voters went unaware for others questions on the ballot. That was especially true of Amendment 1, as many voters who do not have children in school did not pay much attention to it.

Floridians may not have known much about Amendment 1– or 2, 5 and 6 for that matter – because they were legislatively referred constitutional amendments, meaning they were put on the ballot by a vote from the state legislature to amend the state’s constitution.

This is different from Amendments 3 and 4, which were put on the ballot as citizen-proposed measures to amend a part of the state’s constitution.

“In all these local offices, most people have no clue who to vote for, voters are just kind of trying to interpret this stuff with very little context, and that’s the case for most people,” said Veenstra. 

However, if an amendment does not pass in Florida, law states that the amendment must wait two years before it is permitted to be reinstituted back onto the ballot. So it is possible that voters could see these issues again at some point.