What changes will Tuesday’s election bring to the Duval County School Board?
It might make sense to have the winners sworn in (that happens on November 19) before answering, but opinions were divided hours after the polls closed. Here are some takeaways from the results.
No clean cut
Political partisans were fully involved in the campaign, with Jacksonville City Council member Rory Diamond tweeting that there was “a conservative majority at @DuvalSchools for the first time in a generation.”
But there were undoubtedly disappointments on both sides.
Diamond’s choice in the Southside District 3 race, former Moms for Liberty Duval County Chair Rebecca Nathanson, came within a few hundred votes of unseating incumbent Cindy Pearson, a Republican candidate reportedly targeted for ouster by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year.
Pearson’s grassroots supporters and diehard Conservative opponents alike celebrated the failure of efforts to oust her from office.
“We may not be from the same party, (but) boy am I glad Cindy pulled this off!” tweeted Daniel Henry, chairman of the Duval County Democratic Party.
The state Democratic establishment had also directed resources to 7th District candidate Sarah Mannion as part of the party’s “Take Back Local” campaign to help 11 candidates block what state chairwoman Nikki Fried called “the far-right candidates of Moms for Liberty.” Nine of those state candidates won or made it to the runoff on Tuesday, but Mannion lost to Melody Bolduc, a former Duval public school teacher and member of Moms for Liberty, who won along with her 1st District counterpart Tony Ricardo.
Round 2 in November
The partisan battle in the race for the formally nonpartisan 5th District seat will continue in November with a runoff between Reginald Blount, a 29-year-old military member with the backing of Moms for Liberty, and Hank Rogers, a nonprofit youth organization director of operations and a public policy veteran who reports significant support in the education field.
About this majority
The Duval County Republican Party laid out its interpretation of the election late Tuesday night, tweeting that the results “officially mean a 5-2 conservative Republican majority on the school board, with another election to be decided in November. This is the successful culmination of the Duval GOP’s six-year strategy to transform the Duval County School Board.”
The result “makes Jacksonville, Florida, one of the few major cities in America with a truly conservative school board,” continued the message from Vice Chairman Steve Adams. “This momentum will propel the Duval County Republican Party to even greater victories for President Trump, Senator Rick Scott and our entire Republican slate!”
Faith and Learning
While it may not affect the operation of Duval schools, the election promoted two members with experience in aligning education with Christian values. In the 1980s, Ricardo was an elementary school teacher for three years at the New Covenant Christian Academy, which has since closed. Since 2018, Bolduc has run Keys Educational Resources Center Inc., a company described on its website as “a Kingdom-oriented Christian educational resource center” that works with families who homeschool their children. Bolduc’s campaign website, however, does not talk about faith, instead saying, “We must immerse our children in challenging activities, engaging them in mathematical and scientific thinking, with a strong emphasis on reading, writing and critical thinking.”
