The case for and against partisan school board elections

Florida Matters

School board elections have been nonpartisan in Florida since 2000. That’s because voters here approved a constitutional amendment on the issue back in 1998. But now there’s a proposal to make school board races partisan again: a constitutional amendment to reverse the one decided 25 years ago. Floridians will get to vote on Amendment 1 in November. One reason may be that in the past four years, school board meetings have gotten a lot more polarized. And these county level government agencies are getting a lot more attention from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Three people paying close attention to local school boards and this amendment are Tampa Bay Times education reporter Jeff Solochek, Republican political strategist Rod Thomson, who also chairs the Communications Committee with the Sarasota County Republican Party, and Damaris Allen, the executive director of Families for Strong Public Schools. They discussed the arguments for and against partisan school board elections with Florida Matters and took questions from an audience of Tampa Bay area residents at the WUSF performance studio in Tampa.