Republican State Rep. Lal Spencer Roach, R-North Fort Myers, wants voters to decide whether school board elections should be changed from nonpartisan to partisan.
The Florida Constitution currently requires school board elections to be nonpartisan. However, the joint resolution, sponsored by Roach and Rep. Joel Rudman, and Sen. Joe Gruters would propose amendments to change the state constitution and make them partisan elections.
“The bill is about transparency. It’s not about partisanship. It’s not about trying to protect or carve out gains for Republicans or Democrats,” Roach said. “I think the goal in every election should be to provide the voters with as much information about candidates that they’re voting on as possible.”
If the state legislature approves the joint resolution, then voters across the state would vote on whether all school districts should hold partisan elections. If voters approved the proposal, school districts across the state would have partisan school board races beginning in November of 2026.
“Voters will get to make that choice and I think anyone, regardless of your political party affiliation, should be comfortable with the voters making that choice,” Roach said. “Why don’t you want the people to have a say in this?”
In the previous Legislative Session, a similar bill did not make it out of the Secondary Education & Career Development Subcommittee. Roach believes there is more of an appetite for the legislation this year.
“I think this is a crescendo. This was building up to an explosion point. I think where they are now, I think the time is right to do this,” Roach said. “And the election results in November have only encouraged me that there is an appetite for this.”
“But look, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what Spencer Roach thinks. What matters is what the voters in the state of Florida thinks.”
On Monday, he talked about teachers’ unions backing Democrat candidates but dressing them up to represent the values of the community.
“But they’ll dress them up as if they’re reflecting the community’s values and it’s hard to know as a voter because you get this information, this literature, being sent to you that’s union-funded,” he explained. “And it seems like the candidates are good and saying the right things and then obviously once they get on the school board, they basically vote left, which is not consistent with the values of those communities.”
In 1998, voters approved a ballot measure to make school board races nonpartisan.