Florida civic / values essay · 2026 cycle · Not an official ballot

Florida school boards are nonpartisan — and still a values race

If you opened an August ballot and the school-board line had no R and no D next to the names, that wasn’t a hint to skip it. Florida prints those races nonpartisan. That’s the style. Curriculum, parental rights, sports, libraries, and who the board hires are still values questions — the kind you talk about in the car after church. We’re the neighbors who read the public record and put the races in the Florida Values Voter Guide so you don’t have to guess from a ZIP.

We’re independent editorial — see About — not the district, not the union, and not a party office. The numbers are our judgment from what we could open. They’re not a poll. Rubric: how we score. Card in your hand: how to read a JesusVoter card.

Nonpartisan on the style — still a values race

Every registered voter in the precinct votes the school-board seats that precinct actually gets: Republican, Democrat, and NPA. That’s why an NPA church voter still had a real August decision after Florida’s closed primary kept them off the governor and Senate nomination lines. November can still matter. If a seat needed a majority and nobody reached it, the top two keep going. If someone cleared the majority, that seat is done.

The GOP number on a board card is alignment, not a party column. The office can’t print an R. A candidate with a parental-rights brand, a local GOP listing, or a public fight against a progressive board coalition can still show a double-digit GOP score. A registered Democrat with a public-education / union coalition brand will sit low on that bar even though the line says NPA. Same rule we already wrote for Orange County mayor, where Messina is 19 GOP on a forced-NPA line. It isn’t a secret endorsement contract.

District versus ZIP

A school-board district is a slice of streets. A ZIP is a postal route. Two houses in 32801 can sit in different numbered seats — or only share the countywide chair and then split. Our ZIP box estimates county and shows the local fields we researched. It cannot honestly say “this is your District 3 ballot” from five digits.

Pull the sample ballot with your full home address. That’s the official list. Walkthrough: how to read a Florida sample ballot. Civic checklist: how to vote. If our county page lists three board seats and your PDF shows one numbered district plus a chair, the PDF is right. Crossing the extras off in pen is a good habit.

Worked example: Orange County chair

Orange elects a countywide School Board Chair and separate numbered districts. The chair pair we scored:

Alicia K. Farrant (NPA) — 32 / 26 / 14 · C. Mama-bear / parental-rights school-board brand. Higher Constitution score in this chair pair. 72 is a C on the 100-point letter.

Angie Gallo (NPA) — 22 / 16 / 8 · F. No Jesus / Gospel campaign grid on file. FSBA / public-education coalition profile rather than a parental-rights-first brand. 46 is an F on this scale. The lower bars are the public record, not a skipped race.

Farrant 72 (a C), Gallo 46 (an F). The gap is one candidate with a parental-rights first brand versus a longtime board institutionalist. The letter now follows that total. Unofficial, and we’ll keep saying unofficial: Gallo won the chair outright. A values score is not a Winner stamp. County context: Orange County primary 2026.

Worked example: Orange County School Board District 3

District 3 is not the chair. Only precincts in that district vote it. The three names we scored:

Ilia Adorno (NPA) — 30 / 26 / 14 · C. No Jesus / Gospel grid found in what we opened. A local GOP listing that this guide treats as a slight parental-rights / conservative-board edge versus an anti-Moms-for-Liberty opponent. 70 is a C on this scale.

Diana Moore (NPA) — 24 / 20 / 10 · F. Middle of the three-way. Thinner partisan / culture trail than Adorno. Same letter, lower bars. Read that as a thinner public grid, not as “almost Adorno.”

Susanne Marie Pena (NPA) — 20 / 14 / 6 · F. Registered Democrat in public listings. Campaign social framed unseating the only Moms for Liberty board member. 40 is an F. The letter follows the total.

Adorno 70 (C), Moore 54 (F), Pena 40 (F). Sort by the numbers — the letter now matches them. Unofficial: Peña and Moore advance in District 3. Confirm the names on the voteorangefl.gov style before you treat any of those three as your seat.

A thin county file is still a file: Lafayette

Not every county has an Orange-sized local inventory. Lafayette County’s live primary landing is school-board-only: two local races, four local candidates, no county-commission primary on that file. That’s the Lafayette fact, not a stub waiting for sixty-six more paragraphs.

District 3 on that file is Mary Anne McCray (NPA; 4 / 4 / 0) and Mark Beach (NPA; 4 / 4 / 0). Empty Jesus trail, no contrary coalition, forced-NPA. The old 13s were a courtesy mid-band. They’re gone. Neither is a 32 / 26 / 14 parental-rights memo.

District 5 on the same file is Kristyn Folsom versus Ann Murphy, both nonpartisan. The live stub doesn’t print triples for that pair, so we aren’t making some up. The Lafayette County Supervisor of Elections is the sample-ballot office for Mayo. If a name is on the PDF and thin in our guide, the PDF still governs.

Calhoun County is the other small-county illustration, not a second essay. The live landing names School Board District 2 (Scott Barton versus Ray Howell) and District 3 (Laurinda Smith Faircloth versus Craig Lipford). Those four names are on the landing; we aren’t hanging board scores on them here. Open the county in the guide; believe the SOE PDF first.

One statewide walkthrough, not sixty-seven sermons

We’re not writing sixty-seven school-board essays. The county index is the door to local landings. Eight large-county pages carry named races in HTML; the rest keep a real URL and the names on file, then send you to the same interactive guide. Honesty over volume is the standing rule. A county with a dozen board names will not all sit in the 90s.

“Nonpartisan” is not “skip it.” For a lot of NPA church voters, school board was the main August decision they were allowed to make, and it can still be a November decision if the seat went to a runoff. A church membership line is not a 40 Christian score. Voter-file party is not a 20 GOP score by itself on a board card.

If you think a board score is off, send a campaign page, questionnaire, recorded vote, or named news story to hello@jesusvoter.com. Private faith, a kind email, or a claim we cannot open does not by itself change a number.

Statewide offices on the same style — governor, the Senate special, certified November amendments — have their own essays. Don’t let a long board field hide them, and don’t let a statewide race hide the one district you actually vote.