Florida’s public education wins in 2024 election with the defeat of ballot amendment | Opinion

There was little to no visible campaigning on constitutional Amendment 1 ahead of the Nov. 5 election. But the measure could’ve been one of the most consequential ballot questions facing voters this season.

The amendment’s failure is a victory for public education and a defeat for those who want to insert partisan politics into decisions that affect Florida students.

Amendment 1 would have required school board candidates to disclose their party affiliation when running for office. The proposal received a majority of Florida votes but not enough to clear the required 60% approval threshold. Just shy of 55% of voters cast ballot in favor of it.

One potential consequence that didn’t garner much discussion but should have: Had Amendment 1 passed, voters without party affiliation — NPAs — would have been blocked from casting ballots in partisan primaries that often decide the winners of school board races. That would have been counter-intuitive in a state where independents are a growing segment of the electorate.

Supporters of Amendment 1 argued that partisanship has already infiltrated school boards — and many voters know their candidates’ political affiliation even if it is not disclosed — so making the seats officially partisan would have added needed transparency. But we should be working to return those elections to the nonpartisan issues that once dominated them, not forcing candidates to run farther to the right or the left.

Keeping those elections nonpartisan is crucial. We want our school boards to spend more time discussing how to increase reading and math scores than debating the latest culture war. Thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ push to remove what he calls “woke” indoctrination from schools, too much of the focus of education policy in recent years has been on banning books and controlling what teachers can discuss in the classroom.

Florida led the nation for the second year in a row in 2023 in the number of books restricted or removed, permanently or temporarily, from schools, according to PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech.

It’s no wonder then that the Legislature and DeSantis put Amendment 1 on the ballot. The intent appeared to be to root out more liberal candidates running in red parts of the state and force them to respond to primary voters who tend to be more ideological.

DeSantis, specifically, has spent significant political capital trying to get his allies elected to school boards. This is part of an effort to exert control over local education decisions — first by passing state laws, then by having direct control over local boards. Adding an R or D next to candidates’ names on the ballot would have made his mission easier to accomplish.

Let’s not overstate the political implications of what happened with Amendment 1. Voters’ rejection of it was a small defeat for DeSantis in this year’s elections. This still was a very successful election year for the governor and Republicans. Donald Trump carried the state and Miami-Dade; the GOP won all countywide constitutional offices in the county.

DeSantis was mostly focused on defeating Amendment 3 to legalize recreational marijuana for adults and Amendment 4 to protect abortion rights. Both measures failed, though Amendment 4 came within less than 3 points of receiving the needed 60% approval.

These were huge wins for the governor’s political brand. The failure of Amendment 3 was particularly remarkable because in Miami-Dade — Florida’s largest and one of its most urban counties, where voters would generally be expected to approve this kind of measure — most voters nonetheless opposed it.

And yet, the defeat of recreational marijuana will be less consequential than the failure to protect abortion rights and to turn school board elections into partisan showdowns.

While many women in Florida will suffer because of the lack of reproductive rights — the state’s six-week abortion ban will remain in place — our students and parents are protected, as least for now, from more political interference in public schools.

That’s a victory.

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