Two former teachers vying for Duval County’s District 1 School Board seat are offering voters starkly different visions for public education, mirroring a national debate over curriculum, student discipline and school funding.

Nadine Ebri, a former public school teacher who currently works with Microsoft’s ed-tech platform Minecraft Education, will face retired teacher and business owner Tony Ricardo in the Aug. 20 election to replace Kelly Coker, who is not seeking re-election. 

District 1’s seat stretches from Arlington to the northeastern neighborhoods of Jacksonville on the other side of the St. Johns River. Early voting has already begun.

The race comes as Duval County Public Schools grapples with declining enrollment and a tight budget that has led to a proposal to close 26 schools across Jacksonville.

Ebri is running on a platform of increased support for teachers and bringing in more STEM programs to schools. 

Ricardo, endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the local Republican Party, advocates for stricter student discipline and cutting back on everything but the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. He has also supported tighter controls on curriculum. He said he entered the race after he saw parents advocating the removal of books they deemed inappropriate.

“When I saw how the school board handled it, I was a little bit disturbed, to say the least,” Ricardo said. He has also earned the endorsements of GOP lawmakers, including state Sen. Clay Yarborough, Reps. Wyman Duggan and Kiyan Michael and City Councilman Mike Gay.

Ebri said she thinks it’s “dangerous” when politicians restrict teachers’ curriculum. “I trust my daughter’s teacher. I trust that she’s never going to have her read a book that’s not grade-appropriate, that’s not age-level appropriate,” she said.

Backgrounds

Ebri worked with Duval’s school district for about nine years, according to her LinkedIn profile, including six years teaching in K-8 classrooms where she gained recognition for her interactive and engaging classes. She was a finalist for Teacher of the Year for the 2020-21 academic year. She later earned a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of North Florida and started her own education tech company Ebri Education last year.

She said she decided to run for the School Board after seeing major gaps in the school system, especially in marginalized communities. 

As school board races across the state become partisan and political, Ebri, a former registered Republican, is the only candidate who is not registered with a political party in any of Duval’s School Board elections. She has been endorsed by Republican City Councilman Matt Carlucci, former Democratic Sen. Tony Hill, current Duval County School Board chair Darryl Willie and former district Superintendent Diana Greene. Duval Teachers United, the union, also endorsed Ebri.

Ricardo similarly taught in the district, teaching art at Andrew Jackson High School for six years in the 1980s before teaching for two years at New Covenant Christian Academy, a Christian private school that has since closed. He retired from teaching and owns a business, Ricardo Designs, which makes signs and artwork for other businesses. 

Ricardo was a late-entry candidate, joining the race in January this year, but he has received support from the local Republican Party and other conservative groups, including the Duval chapter of Moms for Liberty, a leading conservative group of parents. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had previously identified District 1 as a seat he was targeting this year, endorsed Ricardo. 

Ricardo is also among a statewide slate of candidates endorsed by conservative political committee 1776 Project PAC, which has been linked to school-board elections across the country.

Other conservative political committees, like Empower Parents Florida and School Boards Matter, have sent mailers attacking Ebri’s campaign. Ebri responded to these mailers in a Facebook post where she expanded on her teaching experience and reaffirmed her commitment to marginalized communities. 

“If believing that ALL students have rights and deserve to learn in an environment that makes them feel SAFE makes me a “liberal”, then I’ll proudly accept that label,” she said.

DeSantis and Republicans have endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would make School Board elections partisan if at least 60% of voters approve it.

DeSantis, whose education policies have found him battling School Boards over the last four years, has prioritized School Board elections this year as part of a statewide push to restrict instruction on race and gender, expand school choice programs, and give parents more control over curriculum decisions.

The budget and enrollment

The Duval school district has lost about 30,000 students over the last 10 years, with some parents opting to send their children to publicly funded charter schools or using taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools. This dropping enrollment has only added more pressure to a tight budget for the school district, and a move to close and consolidate schools across the city. 

Both candidates agree that the budget needs to be carefully looked at and reworked. Ricardo suggested an external audit of the budget and said he would be inclined to have a local business look at it. 

However, they differ in what they think should be cut. Ricardo said schools need to go back to the basics — reading, writing and arithmetic. 

“There seems to be a lot of extracurricular programs, not talking about sports, but a lot of programs that are funded, that serve a handful of students,” he said, suggesting that those programs could be cut in the budget. 

Ebri has a different opinion. At a forum organized by the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, The Tributary and other nonprofits, she said that the closure of these programs, like music, would make students less interested in coming to school. 

“These are the things that bring students to the school building. And so if we start taking these programs out, students aren’t going to want to come,” she said, adding that she wants to bring in these programs in more schools. “We need as many programs as possible to get kids excited about learning.”

Absenteeism is a mounting concern, as rates more than doubled since the pandemic. Paula Findlay, the principal of Arlington Elementary, said it was one of her main concerns.

“My teachers are there ready to teach,” she said, “but just the kids being there is a concern. We probably average 85% full attendance every day and the perfect attendance numbers are even fewer than that.”

Findlay also added that the inconsistent attendance left students several grades behind their classes, which also makes teachers’ work more difficult.

Ebri said she would want to analyze the district’s contracts and buses for potential cuts. She said the district needs to be more vigilant of “overcharging” by contractors. 

“Are we overpaying by hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars on certain contracts?” she asked. “We need to also look at our negotiating skills, our contractors pulling one over on us.”

Closing schools should be the “last resort,” she said.

Equitable education

Ebri, who said she began her career teaching in marginalized communities,said she opposes book bans and restrictions on curriculum, “especially ones that affect kids from underrepresented and historically marginalized communities and backgrounds.”

“Diverse parents’ voices,” she said, need to be at the table when discussing topics like race, gender and sexuality. Sensitive subjects could have an opt-in or opt-out policy, she suggested, instead of banning subjects altogether. 

Ricardo said he was inspired to run after he saw parents pushing the district to remove certain books that were available in school libraries. He said it just seemed like the “school board had started running into some serious problems, and the textbook issue was the one.”

Ebri said she worried the contentious politics around the school curriculum made her concerned for teachers’ safety.

“I think it becomes dangerous, especially when people accuse teachers of indoctrinating children and almost criminalizing and demonizing the people whose public service is to help our kids,” she said. 

Ricardo has criticized that stance. “Do we believe what my opponent ‘claims’?” he wrote in one Facebook post, “that ‘there is no place for politics in schools’; or do we just go with the facts? I have made no secret of my conservative views, and believe the product of conservative practices will make the difference in reaching the level of excellence students deserve.”

Ricardo has repeatedly shared content describing transgender identity as a mental disorder. In one post, he referred to transgender people as “freaks/ mental defectives” who “must NOT be allowed to shape the minds of innocent little children.”

He described same-sex marriage as “this perverted Agenda” that “has been FORCED into the public, to desensitize and make it somehow ‘acceptable’.”

He also has regularly shared anti-Islam comments, saying “Islamic immigration to the US should be prohibited” and saying repeatedly that Muslims can’t be good Americans because “democracy and Islam cannot co-exist!” In another post, he wrote, “IF Islam is so great, please point to ANY major accomplishment it has produced, that benefits all mankind.”

He has also shared posts that refer to Vice President Kamala Harris as a “prostitute.”

Yasmina White, a mother of two who has been closely following District 1’s race, said she saw posts on Ricardo’s Facebook profile that she said speak “in a very derogatory way” about Vice President Kamala Harris. 

“How are you going to deal with women who are moms, who are the majority-involved parents for students in a district that you’re going to represent?” she asked.

She also pointed to his posts about the LGBTQ community, calling them homophobic. She said she was concerned with how he would interact with students who identify as queer.

“How can you coherently and truthfully and wholly support these students when you feel a completely different way against them? How do you turn that on and off?” White said.

Ricardo did not respond to calls or text messages with detailed questions about his social media posts. 

Student discipline

The race has also highlighted concerns about student discipline. Ricardo advocates for stricter consequences for misbehavior, including potentially removing disruptive students to alternative schools. Ebri emphasizes the need for student input in disciplinary policies.

According to a study by the American Psychological Association,  threats and violence against pre-K to 12th-grade teachers has increased to levels “equal to or exceeding those prior to the pandemic.”Researchers also found that this has spurred more teachers to want to leave the profession. 

Ricardo believes the board needs to look at classroom discipline guidelines, and hold students more accountable for their actions.

 “There’s no serious consequence for those actions,” he said, referring to student violence. “Students don’t learn anything from just getting a verbal warning, you know, and that’s not how the real world works either.”

The offender needs to be removed from the classroom, he said. When asked what kind of consequences that would entail except for expulsion, he suggested “alternative” schools. 

“There used to be schools set aside, troubled kids that had trouble in the environment and classroom environment, and they would send these kids to the alternative schools.”

The district already has two public schools for students who have violated the District Student Code of Conduct.

Ebri’s approach to student discipline is different – you need student input, she said. 

“Before any policy is ever created, a student representative should be able to look at these policies and give feedback,” she said, especially in the case of student discipline. “They’re the ones experiencing it.”

Ebri believes teachers, educational leaders, community members and parents deserve a seat at the table when making decisions. “We need to have spaces where the community can have dialogue with board members, parents, students”, she said, adding that this would encourage collaboration and bolster policymaking.