Vicky Arias, FISM News
Florida conservatives won major victories in Tuesday’s school board elections providing another indictment on how parents feel about other adults dictating morality for their children.
Bridget Ziegler, Tim Enos, and Robin Marinelli, all backed by Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis won seats in Sarasota County, flipping control of the board from liberal to conservative. The conservative candidates won by at least six percentage points, according to the Herald-Tribune, despite the fact that they all were “trailing in campaign contributions.”
Ziegler said that the tally shows it was “very clear … that [the voters] did not support … the majority of the board and the direction they were heading.”
Marinelli stated that she won because parents “were tired of the way [they] were being treated at the school board meetings … They were not allowed to speak or their time was cut and they were fed up, so they wanted a conservative board.”
Liberal school board members weren’t safe even in the typically deep-blue Miami-Dade County, where two DeSantis-backed candidates won their elections on Tuesday as well.
Whopping 25 of 30 conservative school board candidates endorsed by @GovRonDeSantis win seats across Florida, only five defeated. Will make easier than ever to reimagine classroom politics in public schools. https://t.co/vYmhq4o9Qr
— Ted Bridis (@tbridis) August 24, 2022
Monica Colucci and Roberto Alonso proved that Republican-backed, conservative candidates can win where similar candidates have historically been counted out before votes were ever cast.
Conservatives winning in Miami-Dade, home to the fourth-largest school district in the country, is no small accomplishment. DeSantis garnered just 39% of the votes there in the 2018 gubernatorial election, compared to Democratic candidate Andre Gillum’s 59.9%. President Joe Biden (53%) defeated incumbent Donald Trump (46%) by seven percentage points in the county in 2020.
Thank you to every single volunteer and to all the voters of District 8 for trusting and supporting me during this process. I will work tirelessly on our School Board for all students, parents, and teachers in #MDCPS. Let’s get to work! pic.twitter.com/Q764ZZ14Aw
— Monica Colucci (@MonicaColucciFL) August 24, 2022
The conservative takeover comes as many parents across the nation grapple with increased feelings of exclusion from their child’s education. Emerging trends put schools, not parents, in control of important decisions in their children’s lives.
Meanwhile, flashpoint issues, like mask mandates, critical race theory, and radical gender ideology continue to ignite heated debates between parents and schools across the country.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, students in some school districts “can assume different pronouns, have access to other bathrooms, and change their name without parental involvement.” For example, guidelines set in place by Montgomery Public Schools, Maryland’s largest public school system, do not authorize faculty to notify parents of a student’s transgender status.
Governor DeSantis has been an outspoken opponent of liberal agendas in schools. He passed the Parental Rights in Education bill in early 2022, which bans school employees or third parties from giving classroom instruction on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade.
Other concerns from parents include the fact that some school districts are teaching Critical Race Theory, a theory that, according to Brittanica, espouses that “racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites.”
Pushback against liberal ideologies is gaining ground as “more than 1 million voters across 43 states … switched to the Republican Party over the last year,” according to PBS.
In all, at least 21 of the 30 school board candidates endorsed by Gov. DeSantis won Tuesday and another four will proceed to runoff elections in November. The other five endorsed candidates lost.