Duval County’s District 3 School Board race has erupted into a high-stakes, big-money contest that mirrors intensifying national debates over education.
Incumbent Cindy Pearson faces Rebecca Nathanson, the former leader of the local Moms For Liberty chapter. The race highlights how partisan interests and Florida’s campaign finance laws are reshaping school board elections across the state.
With nearly $140,000 raised between the two candidates, it’s poised to be Jacksonville’s most expensive school board contest in a year where pending school closures have enraged parents and community groups across the county.
School board elections are officially nonpartisan, but that doesn’t limit candidates or other groups from using partisan language.
In this race, although both Pearson and Nathanson are registered Republicans, the state’s leading GOP officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, have consolidated support around Nathanson.
Nathanson declined multiple requests for an interview over the phone, by email and in person. She also backed out of a forum hosted by the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, The Tributary, and other nonprofits.
In public, Nathanson has said she is aligned with DeSantis’ education agenda, which includes restricting instruction on race and gender, expanding school choice programs, and giving parents more control over curriculum decisions.
Nathanson is also part of a slate of candidates running in each of the four Duval County School Board district races on the ballot who share common funders and supporters.
At a fundraiser organized by the conservative-leaning political advocacy group called the Committee for Responsible Governance, Nathanson, District 1 candidate Tony Ricardo, District 5 candidate Reginald Blount and District 7 candidate Melody Boldoc pitched themselves as a team of conservative candidates for the board.
They argued that it wasn’t enough if one of them got elected; it had to be the whole slate.
Pearson has been banking on the work she’s done, both as a school board member and as a volunteer in her district.
“I love being in the schools and supporting the staff in the schools, but also interacting with students in schools and also helping to organize parents to support their schools,” she said. “And that’s a lot of the work I did before running for school board.”
Duval Teachers United, the union representing teachers and staff, endorsed Pearson. Beverly Slough and Sue Woltanski, the chairs of St. Johns and Monroe school boards respectively, also contributed to her campaign.
On a cloudy Thursday morning, Pearson carried a bag of flyers door-to-door in her district. “Vote For Cindy Pearson,” they read, matching the large print on her white T-shirt.
“Hello, I’m Cindy Pearson, your School Board member, and I’m here to remind you to go vote,” she said when an elderly man opened his door.
The man looked at her flyer. “Oh, I think I’ve already received mail from you,” he said.
“Actually,” she explained, “I haven’t sent any yet.”
Much of the political mail in the race has come from state committees not officially connected to either candidate.
Educated Professionals for Jacksonville, one such committee supporting Nathanson, sent postcards featuring a darkened, black-and-white photo of Pearson, nicknaming her “Silent Cindy”.
Florida’s campaign finance laws allow political committees to coordinate with the candidates, but they often don’t disclose that, making it hard to know which committees are involved in any one particular race. A candidate raising money directly for their own account can only receive donations up to $1,000, but donations to political committees don’t face the same restrictions.
Another committee, Floridian for Educational Freedom, has sent mailers supporting Nathanson, while a third, Parents Supporting Schools, has sent postcards supporting Pearson.
Other committees, like Empower Parents Florida, have also sent mailers in support of Nathanson, though it’s not clear those committees are primarily focused on this race.
Referring to the mailers attacking her, Pearson said, “there’s just a lot of misinformation being spread about me to the point where I don’t even recognize the person that my opponent’s running against. It’s not me.”
Of the four School Board races on the ballot this year, Pearson is the only incumbent running for re-election. Last time, she ran and won in a four-way race during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of July 19, including in-kind contributions, Pearson has raised about $62,000 since last October, nearly twice what she did in 2020. Nathanson has raised about $76,000 since last August.
The two political committees primarily supporting Nathanson have raised nearly $60,000 combined, while the one supporting Pearson has raised close to $32,000.
Much of the funding in the race came from dark-money groups that hide who the actual financial backers are by funneling cash through a series of obscure committees. Because committees don’t have to publicly disclose what mailers they’re funding or what races they’re involved with, there could be even more unknown committees backing Nathanson or Pearson.
Funding for Nathanson and the committees supporting her has largely come from conservative groups or other right-leaning political committees, including those run by elected officials like Jacksonville Sen. Clay Yarborough.
The committee supporting Pearson has received funding from a mix of moderates and conservatives, including one of DeSantis’ major funders. She also received support from the political fund for the teachers union.
The budget problem
Parents and community groups have expressed outrage over district proposals to shut down over a dozen schools across the city.
The board has faced higher-than-expected expenses for its plans to renovate old schools and build new ones. While a voter-approved sales tax will also exceed projections, a new DeSantis-backed state law dedicates a larger portion of those funds to charter schools, contributing to a $1.4 billion gap for the district.
The plan to shut down neighborhood schools included several that had received A’s in recent years, which left parents disappointed and even caught Pearson off guard.
“There were schools in my district that should not have been on that list, and I was pretty angry about it, and I voiced that in the meeting,” Pearson said.
Initially, when a consultant presented the School Board with a list of schools to close in 2019, none came from District 3. A few months ago, when the board was given an updated, more expansive list, the plan included closing four District 3 schools: Kings Trail Elementary, Holiday Hill Elementary, Windy Hill Elementary and Brookview Elementary.
Pearson said she has asked district staff to provide the board with a rubric or the criteria they’re using to determine which school should close. She said the criteria should include school performance, walking distances and the school’s location in the community. However, while the list may change, some schools will still need to close, she said.
Pearson has campaigned, in part, on her work to increase funding for schools by supporting the property tax increase designed to boost teacher pay.
Nathanson criticized the tax increase in an interview with News4Jax.
In that interview, she said that the proposal to close schools should not have been a surprise to the board or the community, citing declining public school enrollment rates in Duval County.
She also said the school district could save money if it curtailed its transportation costs, citing a report put together by the district’s Audit Advisory Committee using 2022-2023 budgets.
Duval spent $525 per student on transportation, higher than Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
Still, overall, Duval spends less per student on operations. The report found Orange spent less on operations and Hillsborough spent less on both instruction and operations, but every other county spent more on both.
Nathanson’s campaign treasurer, Mark Sizemore, currently serves as the chair of the Audit Advisory Committee.
While discussing the budget with the Tributary, Pearson suggested lobbying for the state to fund items like transportation to increase money coming into the school district. “Every county in the state of Florida is underfunded in their transportation line item.” she added.
A ‘non-partisan’ race
Although the race is nonpartisan, mailers and texts supporting Nathanson have relied on partisan language.
“ATTENTION ALL REPUBLICAN VOTERS!” reads one mailer from pro-Nathanson pac Floridian for Educational Freedom. “The DUVAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY is … viewing Rebecca Nathanson as a Threat to Their Woke Education Agenda.”
In addition to DeSantis and Yarborough, Nathanson has gotten the support of GOP Jacksonville City Councilmen Rory Diamond, Mike Gay and Terrence Freeman, along with state Reps. Dean Black and Wyman Duggan.
“I prefer to keep the School Board nonpartisan,” Pearson said. “The less we politicize school, the better for me. … If we go to partisan candidates, then political parties will control who runs, and we will eliminate the opportunity for grassroots candidates.”
A proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November would make School Board elections partisan if at least 60% of voters approve it.
Although Nathanson previously led the Duval chapter of conservative parent-advocacy group Moms for Liberty, the group does not appear to have formally endorsed her, but it has endorsed the conservative candidates in the three other races.
The leaders of the chapter have contributed to Nathanson’s campaign.
The Moms For Liberty Duval Chapter and the chapter chair, Holli Dean, did not respond to requests for interviews.
Gamble Scott, a member of the progressive Public School Defenders, said she was scared of the unified push by conservatives in each of the School Board races. With four out of seven seats up in the air, this School Board election is critical, she said. This has made her more invested in her activism, despite her district not being up for election.
She noted two current School Board members, April Carney and Charlotte Joyce, have signed pledges for Moms For Liberty, and with two more votes, that slate would have a majority on the seven-member board.
Public School Defenders is supporting Pearson in the District 3 race, Scott told the Tributary, despite past disagreements with her.
“I don’t agree with all of the votes made on the School Board,” Scott said about Pearson, “but she also truly cares about the best interests of the public schools, all of the children in public schools and will work with everyone else on the board.”
