Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
As if school boards across the state didn’t already face enough challenges and discord, there is now a proposal in the House that would make elections to these governing bodies a partisan issue.
House Resolution HRJ-35, introduced in August for the 2022 legislative session and recently referred to committee, seeks to make school board races partisan contests.
If approved by legislators in the coming session, the question would be put to Florida voters as a constitutional amendment on the 2022 midterm ballot. The question would be, should candidates running for school board seats have to declare a political party affiliation?
Sponsored by Republican State Representatives Spencer Roach (North Fort Myers) and Tyler Sirois (Brevard County), the resolution is supported on the Senate side by Senator Joe Gruters of Sarasota, who is also the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.
The rhetoric and sniping has already begun between proponents and opponents of the measure. Proponents say nonpartisan races are a sham, offering that candidates already represent political viewpoints whether they declare them or not, and that voters simply want clarity on the issue. A candidate pretending that he or she has no party affiliation is false and misleading, they say.
The measure, they say, will bring transparency to the process. Already, they say, there exists a preponderance of politics in school board races and the nonpartisan label merely obscures the fact. Voters, they say, know which candidates represent their political interests and vote accordingly.
Opponents call the measure a solution to a nonexistent problem. The say it will inject politics into an already difficult governing situation. They note that school board elections have been nonpartisan since 1998, when Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment to that end.
Education, they argue, is a nonpartisan issue, and injecting politics into it would only harm the children.