Florida school board elections, 2016

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Elections

General elections for Florida school boards were held on August 30, 2016. These elections are referred to as primary elections in Florida but are functionally general elections; if no candidate won a majority of votes cast in the "primary" election, a "general" election was held on November 8, 2016, effectively serving as a runoff election. Unopposed elections were canceled and did not appear on the ballot. Special elections were held in conjunction with some general elections to fill vacancies.

The 38 Florida school districts among America's largest school districts by enrollment held school board elections for 97 seats in 2016. Here are several quick facts about those elections:

• The largest school district by enrollment with an election in 2016 was the Miami-Dade County Public Schools with 356,233 K-12 students.
• The smallest Florida school district among the nation's largest with an election in 2016 was the Columbia County School District with 10,137 K-12 students.
• Miami-Dade County Public Schools had the most seats on the 2016 ballot with five seats up for election.
• Twenty-nine districts tied for the fewest seats on the 2016 ballot with two seats up for election each.

The district listed below served 2,590,841 K-12 students during the 2013-2014 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Click on the district names for more information on each one and its school board elections.

2016 Florida School Board Elections
District	Primary date	General date	Regular term (years)	Seats up for election	Total board seats	Student enrollment
Alachua County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	28,157
Bay District Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	27,053
Brevard Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	71,232
Broward County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	4	9	262,666
Charlotte County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	3	5	16,264
Citrus County Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	15,070
Collier County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	44,418
Columbia County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	10,137
Duval County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	4	7	127,653
Escambia County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	3	5	40,753
Flagler County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	12,754
Hernando County School Board	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	22,069
Hillsborough County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	4	7	203,439
Lake County Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	41,794
Leon County Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	33,747
Manatee County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	3	5	46,705
Marion County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	42,107
Martin County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	18,792
Miami-Dade County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	6	9	356,233
Nassau County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	3	5	11,155
Okaloosa County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	30,223
Orange County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	4	8	187,092
Pasco County Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	68,109
Pinellas County Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	3	7	103,411
Polk County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	3	7	97,953
Putnam County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	11,111
Santa Rosa County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	25,893
Sarasota County Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	41,395
School Board of Highlands County	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	12,200
School District of Clay County	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	35,523
School District of Indian River County	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	18,060
School District of Lee County	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	4	7	87,425
School District of Osceola County	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	58,204
School District of Palm Beach County	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	3	7	182,895
Seminole County Public Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	64,851
St. Johns County School District	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	33,583
St. Lucie County School Board	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	39,477
Volusia County Schools	8/30/2016	11/8/2016	4	2	5	61,238

Issues

Pinellas elementary schools produce failing black students

See also: Pinellas County Schools elections (2016)

Pinellas County Schools sued by Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) announced on August 31, 2016, that it is suing Pinellas County Schools for "subjecting black students and students with disabilities to disproportionate arrests and restraints such as pepper spray for common misbehavior." The complaint was filed with both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, and detailed how the district's use of law enforcement officers in schools has resulted in discrimination across the district. According to SPLC attorney Amir Whitaker, "School resource officers are very common throughout the district, there’s probably upwards of 13 law enforcement agencies within the district and [the district] also operates their own police force."

Superintendent Michael Grego

The lawsuit arose from an incident at Richard L. Sanders School in Pinellas Park, a school for K-12 students with learning disabilities. The lawsuit stated that two students, named as "PP" and "HF," were "honor roll students who were arrested [earlier this year] after defending a female student who was attacked by a male student in the school cafeteria. Both PP and HF were arrested, and a School Resource Officer (SRO) used the chemical weapon and restraint known as ‘pepper spray’ on HF, temporarily blinding him." The complaint said that although the original misdemeanor charges against the students were dropped, both still have criminal arrest records because of the fight.

Pinellas superintendent Michael Grego did not want to comment on the lawsuit until he examined the allegation. However, the district issued a statement about the litigation:

“	The Southern Poverty Law Center filed their complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The Pinellas County Schools Legal office received a copy today. The complaint will be reviewed, and all applicable information will be provided to the DOJ and/or OCR as requested. The district welcomes the opportunity to review existing practices and determine if there are additional best practices that can be implemented to continue the significant reduction in student arrests.	”
—Pinellas County Schools (August 31, 2016)

Pinellas elementary schools produce failing black students

On August 14, 2015, the Tampa Bay Times released an investigation called "Failure Factories" that they conducted on Pinellas County Schools. According to the report, five elementary schools in the district—Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo, and Melrose—produced students who were failing standardized tests. According to the scores when the report was released, eight in 10 failed reading and nine in 10 failed math. Additionally, the state Department of Education ranked Melrose as the worst school in Florida, Fairmount Park as the second worst, Maximo as the 10th worst, Lakewood as the 12th worst, and Campbell Park as the 15th worst. The Tampa Bay Times tied these numbers to a decision the school board made in 2007 ending efforts to integrate white and black children.

Other statistics released by the report included:

Florida Department of Education

“	Ninety-five percent of black students tested at the schools are failing reading or math, making the black neighborhoods in southern Pinellas County the most concentrated site of academic failure in all of Florida. Teacher turnover is a chronic problem, leaving some children to cycle through a dozen instructors in a single year. In 2014, more than half of the teachers in these schools asked for a transfer out. At least three walked off the job without notice. All of this is a recent phenomenon. By December 2007, when the board ended integration, black students at the schools had posted gains on standardized tests in three of the four previous years. None of the schools was ranked lower than a C. Today, all the schools have F ratings. After reshaping the schools, the district funded four of them erratically. Some years they got less money per student than other schools, including those in more affluent parts of the county. In 2009, the year after resegregation, at least 50 elementary schools got more money per student than Campbell Park. Other districts with higher passing rates are doing far more to aid black students, including creating special offices to target minority achievement, tracking black students’ progress in real time and offering big bonuses to attract quality teachers to high-minority schools. Pinellas does none of those things.	”
—Tampa Bay Times (2015)

The problem appeared to extend beyond those five elementary schools. According to the Tampa Bay Times, black children in the district failed at a higher rate than almost any other district in the state. In 2014, they were one-third more likely to fail at math than black students in Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange, and Palm Beach counties. They were 23 percent more likely to fail math than black children in Hillsborough.

A vote to keep children in neighborhood schools

Board member Linda Lerner

Board member Peggy O'Shea

On December 18, 2007, the Pinellas County School Board met to consider a plan that created "neighborhood schools," meant to keep children close to their homes. Five out of the seven board members voted to approve the plan, and it passed. Following the vote, a journalist from the Tampa Bay Times called it, "De-facto segregation." The result was that children in white neighborhoods attended schools where a majority of the population was white, and the same with children residing in black neighborhoods. Three of the five board members who voted for the plan were still on the board in 2016: Carol Cook, Peggy O'Shea, and Linda Lerner. O'Shea and Lerner were re-elected in 2014, and Cook ran for re-election on August 30, 2016.

Superintendent turnover

The district experienced high turnover at its top position prior to this election, cycling through four superintendents in just five years. Four months after the vote in 2007, Superintendent Clayton Wilcox, who had constructed the plan to end integration, announced he was leaving his position to take a job with Scholastic. The board replaced him with Julie Janssen, who developed a plan to offer teachers a free master's degree if they completed "rigorous on-the-job training and stayed at their school for at least five years." This was designed with the hope that more qualified and experienced teachers would boost the failing students' test scores. She was fired by the school board in 2011. The interim superintendent who replaced her, John Stewart, then canceled the master's program. The board hired Mike Grego to serve as superintendent in 2012. In his efforts to close the racial gap, Grego bolstered a program adding classroom aides, mental health therapists, and navigators hired to put families in contact with resources outside the district. "We will close this gap," he said. "I can tell you that, sure as I’m sitting here."

Schools in chaos

The Tampa Bay Times report described the daily situation for students at the five Pinellas elementary schools:

“	In the mornings, unsupervised boys and girls pack the drop-off area. Giggling and shoving often give way to fist fights and wrestling, parents say. It’s so volatile that Moe Thurton won’t let his 10-year-old son J’Len walk to school. 'It’s fights every day. I’m getting out of my car and physically breaking kids up from fighting,' Thurton, 43, said in March. 'I broke up two fights last week.' Inside the school, students roam the campus at will, said Scott Ryan, a special-needs teacher who resigned in 2013 rather than work another full year at the school. 'I would go in and teachers would be talking,' Ryan said, 'and the kids are telling the teachers to shut up.'	”
—Tampa Bay Times (2015)

Fairmount Park recorded 661 referrals "for violence and disruption" in the 2013-2014 school year. This number contrasts sharply to 198 referrals of this kind in the 2009-2010 school year.

School board bans disbursement of religious materials

See also: Education reform: The fight to shape public school curriculum (2016)

Orange County Public Schools in central Florida also saw controversy when a Christian group received permission to distribute Bibles and religious materials to students in the district in 2013. The school board simultaneously decided that non-Christian groups would be allowed to distribute materials to students as well. The board, however, censored the material that the non-Christian group sought to provide without censoring the materials distributed by the Christian organization.

In 2014, it was rumored that a Satanist group was planning to hand out a book in the district called The Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities. Lucien Greaves, a spokesperson for the Satanic Temple, said that the group did not approve of the precedent of disseminating religious texts in schools, but, "if a public school board is going to allow religious pamphlets and full Bibles to be distributed to students—as is the case in Orange County, Florida—we think the responsible thing to do is to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of differing religious opinions, as opposed to standing idly by while one religious voice dominates the discourse and delivers propaganda to youth."

Although the group did not approach the board to ask permission to distribute the book, the rumor generated intrigue in the district. School board members Bill Sublette and Kat Gordon received over 8,000 emails from people urging the board to ban the distribution of the materials. Sublette favored ending the distribution of all religious materials by outside groups following the public outcry. The board voted to allow passive distribution of some materials, such as YMCA and Boys and Girls Club information, but banned the distribution of religious, political, and sectarian materials during a meeting in February 2015.

Election trends

Trends in Florida school board elections

See also: School boards in session: 2014 elections by the numbers

The following sections analyze competitiveness and incumbency advantage in school board elections held in Florida's largest school districts by student enrollment. These districts utilized primary elections that are functionally general elections. If no candidate won a majority of votes cast at the "primary" election, a "general" election was held on November 8, 2016, effectively serving as a runoff election. All of the school board elections held in the state in 2014 and 2016 were nonpartisan.

Details of the data discussed here can be found in the table below.

Competitiveness

A total of 72 school board seats in Florida's largest school districts by enrollment were up for election in 2016. In 2014, 124 seats were on the ballot, and 289 candidates ran in the elections. That created an average of 2.33 candidates per seat, which was higher than the 2014 national average of 1.89 candidates per seat. A total of 21.77 percent of school board seats up for election in Florida were unopposed in 2014. Nationwide that year, 32.57 percent of school board seats were unopposed.

Incumbency advantage

See also: Analysis of incumbency advantage in the 2014 school board elections

A total of 78.23 percent of the school board incumbents whose terms were on the ballot in Florida in 2014 ran to retain their seats, and 81.44 percent of them won. Nationally, 81.37 percent of incumbents won re-election in 2014.

Forty-five newcomers were elected to school boards in the state in 2014. They took 36.29 percent of the seats on the ballot, which was lower than the 38.19 percent of school board seats that went to newcomers nationally in 2014.

The map below details the success rates for incumbents who ran in the 2014 school board elections that were held in the largest school districts by enrollment in the U.S.

Data table

Florida school board elections, 2014 - 2016
	2014	2016
All candidates
Seats up	124	72
Candidates	289	TBD
Candidates/seat	2.33	TBD
Unopposed seats	27	TBD
% unopposed	21.77%	TBD
% seats won by newcomers	36.29%	TBD
Incumbents
Sought re-election	97	TBD
Unopposed	26	TBD
Retained	79	TBD
% retained	81.44%	TBD

Academic performance

See also: Public education in Florida

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Education terms
For more information on education policy terms, see this article.
School board elections portal Glossary of education terms School choice on the ballot Education on the ballot

NAEP scores

See also: NAEP scores by state

The National Center for Education Statistics provides state-by-state data on student achievement levels in mathematics and reading in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The chart below presents the percentage of fourth and eighth grade students that scored at or above proficient in reading and math during school year 2012-2013. Florida's scores were higher than its neighboring states (Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi). The state's grade four reading scores were also higher than the national average.

Percent of students scoring at or above proficient, 2012-2013
	Math - Grade 4	Math - Grade 8	Reading - Grade 4	Reading - Grade 8
Florida	41%	31%	39%	33%
Alabama	30%	20%	31%	25%
Georgia	39%	29%	34%	32%
Mississippi	26%	21%	21%	20%
United States	41%	34%	34%	34%
Source: United States Department of Education, ED Data Express, "State Tables"

Graduation, ACT and SAT scores

See also: Graduation rates by groups in state and ACT and SAT scores in the United States

The following table shows the graduation rates and average composite ACT and SAT scores for Florida and surrounding states during the 2012-2013 school year. All statements made in this section refer to that school year.

In the United States, public schools reported graduation rates that averaged to about 81.4 percent. About 54 percent of all students in the country took the ACT, while 50 percent reported taking the SAT. The average national composite scores for those tests were 20.9 out of a possible 36 for the ACT, and 1498 out of a possible 2400 for the SAT.

Florida schools reported a graduation rate of 75.6 percent during the 2012-2013 school year, second highest among its neighboring states.

In Florida, more students took the ACT than the SAT in 2013, earning an average ACT score of 19.6.

Comparison table for graduation rates and test scores, 2012-2013
State	Graduation rate, 2013		Average ACT composite, 2013		Average SAT composite, 2013
	Percent	Quintile ranking**	Score	Participation rate	Score	Participation rate
Florida	75.6%	Fifth	19.6	74%	1,457	67%
Alabama	80%	Fourth	20.4	78%	1,608	7%
Georgia	71.7%	Fifth	20.7	51%	1,452	75%
Mississippi	75.5%	Fifth	18.9	95%	1,673	3%
United States	81.4%		20.9	54%	1498	50%
**Graduation rates for states in the first quintile ranked in the top 20 percent nationally. Similarly, graduation rates for states in the fifth quintile ranked in the bottom 20 percent nationally. Sources: United States Department of Education, "ED Data Express" ACT.org, "2013 ACT National and State Scores" The Commonwealth Foundation, "SAT scores by state, 2013"

Dropout rate

See also: Public high school dropout rates by state for a full comparison of dropout rates by group in all states

The high school event dropout rate indicates the proportion of students who were enrolled at some time during the school year and were expected to be enrolled in grades nine through 12 in the following school year but were not enrolled by October 1 of the following school year. Students who have graduated, transferred to another school, died, moved to another country, or who are out of school due to illness are not considered dropouts. The average public high school event dropout rate for the United States remained constant at 3.3 percent for both school year 2010–2011 and school year 2011–2012. The event dropout rate for Florida was lower than the national average at 2.1 percent in the 2010-2011 school year, and 2.1 percent in the 2011-2012 school year.

State profile

State profile

Demographic data for Florida
	Florida	U.S.
Total population:	20,244,914	316,515,021
Land area (sq mi):	53,625	3,531,905
Race and ethnicity**
White:	76%	73.6%
Black/African American:	16.1%	12.6%
Asian:	2.6%	5.1%
Native American:	0.3%	0.8%
Pacific Islander:	0.1%	0.2%
Two or more:	2.4%	3%
Hispanic/Latino:	23.7%	17.1%
Education
High school graduation rate:	86.9%	86.7%
College graduation rate:	27.3%	29.8%
Income
Median household income:	$47,507	$53,889
Persons below poverty level:	19.8%	11.3%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, "American Community Survey" (5-year estimates 2010-2015) Click here for more information on the 2020 census and here for more on its impact on the redistricting process in Florida. **Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.

Presidential voting pattern

See also: Presidential voting trends in Florida

Florida voted Republican in five out of the seven presidential elections between 2000 and 2024.

Pivot Counties (2016)

Ballotpedia identified 206 counties that voted for Donald Trump (R) in 2016 after voting for Barack Obama (D) in 2008 and 2012. Collectively, Trump won these Pivot Counties by more than 580,000 votes. Of these 206 counties, four are located in Florida, accounting for 1.94 percent of the total pivot counties.

Pivot Counties (2020)

In 2020, Ballotpedia re-examined the 206 Pivot Counties to view their voting patterns following that year's presidential election. Ballotpedia defined those won by Trump won as Retained Pivot Counties and those won by Joe Biden (D) as Boomerang Pivot Counties. Nationwide, there were 181 Retained Pivot Counties and 25 Boomerang Pivot Counties. Florida had three Retained Pivot Counties and one Boomerang Pivot County, accounting for 1.66 and 4.00 percent of all Retained and Boomerang Pivot Counties, respsectively.

More Florida coverage on Ballotpedia

• Elections in Florida
• United States congressional delegations from Florida
• Public policy in Florida
• Endorsers in Florida
• Florida fact checks
• More...

See also

Florida	School Boards	News and Analysis
Public education in Florida List of school districts in Florida	School board elections, 2016 Florida school board elections, 2015 Florida school board elections, 2014	Education reform at the state and local levels (2016) School boards in session: 2015 in brief Analysis of spending in America's largest school districts Ballotpedia's school board candidate survey