News

A roundup of Florida education news from around the state (Tampa Bay Times Gradebook)

The big story: More than 200 Florida school board seats are up for grabs on Tuesday’s ballot.

If you’re like most voters, you have yet to formalize your decision. Just over 10% of Pasco County voters participated in early voting, with 16% in Hillsborough County and 18.5% in Pinellas County.

Here are three things to think about before filling in those ovals.

• Every voter can vote in school board races. Florida rejected a 2024 proposal to make board seats partisan, meaning that any registered voter may take part in these elections. That includes independents and those with no party affiliation.

This doesn’t mean that party politics haven’t infiltrated the campaigns.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has largely stepped back from his past involvement, Politico reports. But both Republican and Democratic leaders, clubs and organizations have endorsed candidates. Two left-leaning organizations recently put $250,000 into mailers for friendly candidates across the state, Florida Phoenix reports. A right-leaning group has been working to influence Orange County board elections, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Still, the guiding principle remains that public education should be run with the best interests of children, not politics, at the fore. So everybody votes.

• Several of the races will be decided Tuesday. For school board races, the August primary really is the general. If any candidate for a seat wins a majority, that person is elected. That’s going to happen for many of the seats because they have only two candidates. They include two of three positions in Pinellas County, and one of three in Pasco County.

Races with three or more aspirants are less likely to yield a winner on Tuesday, simply because the votes are spread among more people. It’s not unheard of for a candidate to emerge with the W in a three-person field, but the more, the more improbable.

If no one gets 50%+1, the two top vote-getters head to a November runoff. So each vote matters.

• The culture war debates that marked the past two school board election cycles have largely dissipated. The Moms for Liberty phenomenon has all but ended, as candidates in most races have throttled back talk about books, gender and sex in favor of more pressing matters such as taxes, school closures, teacher pay, AI and screen time.

Candidates for the most part haven’t lashed out at one another with personal attacks. Instead, they’ve been talking in more nuanced ways about their experiences and views in an effort to say why they’re well suited for the board. (That’s not to say there’s no bashing, though. See this Sun-Sentinel story for one example.)

School boards govern millions if not billions of dollars, often overseeing the largest employers in their counties while holding responsibility for educating the majority of children there. So it’s worth checking out who wants to sit at the table before casting that vote.

Find out more about the candidates for Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas school board seats in the Times online voter guide. Voting takes place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Hot topics

Nursing: The University of South Florida debuted an expansion of its nursing school as part of its effort to combat the state’s nurse shortage.

New College: A Tampa businessman is the new chairperson for New College’s Board of Trustees.

Job training: St. Lucie County schools are expanding their career-technical offerings to align with local industry needs, WPEC reports.

Freshman class: Entering freshmen at the University of West Florida have the school’s highest-ever GPA, WUWF reports.

Coaching pay: Florida lawmakers allowed school districts to set up plans with booster clubs and other groups to improve the pay of sports and extracurriculars coaches. So far, just one school district has announced such a plan, WJXT reports.