TAMPA, Fla. – In November, Floridians will vote on an amendment to make school board elections partisan.

Amendment 1 would make school board elections partisan beginning in the November 2026 general election and for primary elections nominating party candidates for the 2026 election.

Candidates would be nominated for the general election through party primaries, and would have a label of “Democrat” or “Republican” next to their name on the ballot.

“Students are not partisan, and certainly, our children are not partisan,” Hillsborough County school board member Lynn Gray said.

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The amendment has received strong support and opposition from parents, teachers and legislators.

“There’s so much politics in schools already right now being pushed in,” Julie Gebhards, a mother in Tampa Bay said.

Florida is currently one of 41 states with laws allowing non-partisan school board elections.

Florida had partisan school board elections until an amendment was approved in 1998.

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“If you put a stamp on someone, ‘Oh, you’re Republican, so therefore you’re thinking that way’, there’s a huge range of thoughts within the Republican arena. And Democrats, the same,” Gray said.

Some Hillsborough County school board members who are also former teachers believe this would influence what’s being taught in the classroom every day.

“I think the most important information you need to have is what that person is about and what they represent and who they are as a person, and not about politics,” Hillsborough County school board member Nadia Combs said.

However, some parents who are in support of Amendment 1 believe politics are already infiltrating schools on a day-to-day basis.

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“I think it just provides a baseline for us to go into an election understanding the platform that the candidate is coming from, and knowing that those values are going to align closer with my own,” Gebhards said.

The Florida Education Association says a partisan race would shift the focus of the school board.

“Rather than the focus on, ‘Hey, what do our kids need? Do we have the right music and art programs? Are our career and tech programs being funded appropriately?’” Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said.

Dr. Joshua Scacco, the Director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy at USF, says the separation of politics and education isn’t necessarily clear, because school boards deal with political issues.

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“All the issues that come before the school board are, indeed, political,” Scacco saod. “And that’s just because these are public entities. They’re funded by taxpayer dollars. So, inherently, they are political. Whether it’s taxing, whether it’s the content that children receive in schools or young adults receive in schools, it’s political.”

Scacco says a partisan label could encourage more political polarization, which could make the decision-making by a school board a challenge.

“Education is political,” Scacco said. “You can’t necessarily draw this sort of firewall between education being nonpolitical and what that looks like and what that means.”

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Gebhards says this amendment would only help voters make the most educated decision.

“And let people vote according to their values, you know, and whether that’s an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ next to the name, you can choose,” Gebhards said.

Amendment 1 is on the ballot in the general election in November. If it passes, it would go into effect starting in 2026.

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