New Report: As Voters Elect Public Education Champions to School Boards, Politicians Ramp Up Attacks

New research shows Florida politicians using tactics to bully school board members, delegitimize public education, and ultimately privatize education

The key to safeguarding public education and empowering school board members to do the jobs they were elected to is an engaged, organized public

St. Petersburg, Fla. — Last week’s pro-equality school board election victories underscore an important trend across Florida: people want books on shelves, inclusive and accurate curriculum, support for LGBTQ+ students and teachers, divisive politics out of school boards, and school board leaders who will use their power to fight for those values. And putting pro-equality leaders on school boards is key to safe, inclusive environments for all students. But new research warns that those champions for public education, despite being tapped by the voters, are often stepping into hostile political environments and are being personally and professionally targeted by Florida state officials, including the Governor and State Board of Education commissioners. Those school board members, the data illuminates, need an unrelenting and engaged community around them in order to weather attacks from the State.

“These real and heartbreaking stories from school board members are both a warning to the nation about looming attacks on public education and a reminder that our champions need us all year, every year,” said Brandon Wolf, Equality Florida Senior Director of Communications Strategy. “Florida is ground zero for many of the attacks on books, curriculum, history, and the freedom to learn. For us, this research is an affirmation that we must organize, mobilize, and show up to throw sand in the gears of the right wing machine. For the rest of the country, let this data serve as an important reminder: what is cooked up in Florida doesn’t stay here. We are your canary in the coal mine – and the frontline where the resistance to hate and censorship is being built.” 

While the research and election results show that Moms for Liberty has fallen out of favor with voters, researchers document large ripple effects of right-wing politicians publicly humiliating and threatening school board members, threatening school district funding, and passing laws to limit local control and decision-making on matters of education. School board members report a widespread sense of fear; limitations to their personal freedoms, limitations to their ability to support high-quality education that is welcoming to all students, and an erosion of their independence as duly elected public servants. The report finds that:

• ​The State regularly surveils school board members’ meetings and personal social media, publicly threatens school board members on social media, and summons them to State Board of Education meetings to pressure them into compliance.
• The State also weaponizes the legal system to harass school board members who deviate from their policy agenda. Examples include retaliatory loss of funding and removal from office.
• The State passes seemingly innocuous laws that remove local power from school board members.
• Individuals and organizations meant to advise school board members, such as school district attorneys and professional associations, are instead rewarding silence and compliance with the State’s far-right agenda.

The school board members interviewed described intense personal, professional, and public impacts arising from the State’s bullying tactics:

• 35 percent limit their own personal freedom out of fear.
• 53 percent say that they are unable to advocate for what matters.
• 24 percent chose not to run for re-election because of the intense pressure.
• 71 percent describe the loss of educational opportunities.

The report also connects the dots between the right-wing culture wars and Florida’s crusade to privatize education. As one school board member explains:

And what’s really happening is you are dismantling public education from every angle…. It is like, everyone is being ingrained with all this terrible noise about public schools and making other choices…. So combine that with right-sizing, combine that with declining enrollment, combine that with funding issues. It feels like a full-on attack on public education. It’s so scary. It’s like a win-win for them. It’s just, the chaos just works.

The findings underscore the urgent need for Floridians to continue engaging with school boards outside of election cycles. Moms for Liberty and their far-right political enablers leverage the power of government and extra-legal tactics to subvert the voices of pro-equality, pro-public education school board members because their agenda is deeply unpopular. The best answer is the democratic one: an organized and energized public that pushes back against state-sanctioned harassment, shows up relentlessly to support and defend pro-equality champions, and organizes year round to school board meetings. 

This formula has been proven to shake communities free of the grip of Moms for Liberty and the far-right. In Sarasota, after Moms for Liberty secured a right-wing majority in 2022, school board meetings descended into chaos. The school district was hijacked by book banning and curriculum censorship. So when anti-LGBTQ hate was routinely being spewed at the only openly LGBTQ member of the board without consequence, the community fought back. Sarasotans began showing up to school board meetings in overwhelming numbers to show support for their pro-equality board members and publicly reject Moms for Liberty’s agenda. When school board Chair Bridget Ziegler’s scandals derailed the board’s work, the community showed up to demand she step aside. And after years of that tireless organizing, the community won. Ziegler announced she would not seek reelection and, in last week’s primaries, voters flipped that board to a pro-equality majority.

Many school board members in the study believe Florida and other states across the country are up against an existential threat to public education, a cornerstone of our democracy. As one school board member put it: “You get tough and stay strong, do two good terms, and then train up somebody else so they could take over for you. But we have to stand up and take public education. We just got to, at whatever cost.” 

The report shares some of the creative ways that school board members continue their advocacy despite these challenges. But it also makes clear that they cannot do it alone. We, the people, must reject anti-equality, anti-public education politicians, push back against the tactics of bullying from the State, and stand in support of pro-equality school board members who refuse to bow to the right wing pressure campaign.

Read the full report here.