The Duval County District 7 School Board race has brought competing parent advocacy groups — both progressive and conservative — into a contentious battle to oversee school policy as the district grapples with a culture war, declining budgets and potential school closures.

Melody Bolduc and Sarah Mannion are vying for the Mandarin-area Duval School Board seat to replace term-limited Lori Hershey. 

Bolduc, a 24-year teacher turned homeschool advocate, runs a company that provides consulting and Christian-based curriculum for homeschooling parents. She has said she’s running to hold a failing public school system accountable. She’s aligned herself with Moms for Liberty, a conservative group that has pushed to restrict curricula and the availability of books in schools, and she’s received Gov. Ron DeSantis’ endorsement.

Mannion is, in many ways, Bolduc’s opposite. 

Mannion, an attorney of nearly 12 years, serves as the treasurer of the Mandarin Oaks Elementary Parent Teachers Association and the Secretary of the School Advisory Council. She is a registered Democrat and has support from Public School Defenders, a left-leaning activist group that seeks to counter Moms for Liberty. 

School board races are technically nonpartisan races, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies have pushed to take over school boards across the state with candidates aligned to his education policy agenda.

DeSantis has endorsed Bolduc alongside Tony Ricardo and Rebecca Nathanson, who are vying for Districts 1 and 3, respectively. All three candidates have also been endorsed by conservative political committee 1776 Project PAC, which has endorsed candidates in more than 100 other school board elections around the country.

Meanwhile, the Florida Democratic Party has donated to Mannion’s campaign and the Duval County Democratic Party has urged voters to support her. Mannion has also received endorsements from Republican City Councilman Matt Carlucci, Democratic Councilman Jimmy Peluso, Equality Florida Action PAC and the teachers union, Duval Teachers United.

Of the conservative slate of Duval School Board candidates — Ricardo, Nathanson, Bolduc and District 5’s Reginald Blount — Bolduc was the only one to attend a forum organized by the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, The Tributary and other nonprofits.

Bolduc has supported private school and homeschool vouchers. At the forum, she said that “funding should follow the student in every situation,” regardless of whether the student is in a public or private school or if the student is educated at home.

She said the school district should also create an office dedicated to helping homeschooling families. While charters, private schools and homeschool families don’t have to abide by the same curriculum and teaching regulations, Bolduc said they were already held accountable through testing.

Of the conservative slate of Duval School Board candidates — Ricardo, Nathanson, Bolduc and District 5’s Reginald Blount — Bolduc was the only one to attend the Jacksonville Public Education Fund forum.

Mannion expressed concerns about the impact of vouchers on neighborhood public schools. “Every parent deserves the right to make educational decisions for their child,” she said at the same forum. “But the role of the school board is to advocate and strive for our neighborhood schools. And in this era of choice, we should be working to make sure that our neighborhood schools are the top choice every time.”

Bolduc’s critics say her homeschooling business creates a conflict of interest. Last year, the DeSantis administration expanded the state’s school voucher program, which can be used to pay for private schools, and created a new voucher program to give money to families that choose to keep their kids at home instead of in public or private schools.

Opponents say the program siphons money from public school districts to private schools and homeschoolers, which do not have the same accountability and fiscal transparency standards as public schools.

This comes at the same time the state has expanded how much taxpayer money school districts must share with charter schools, which also are not subject to all of the same standards as traditional public schools.

Bolduc, with her homeschooling business, “benefits directly from vouchers and the defunding of public education,” said Travis Akers, a Navy vet who initially ran against Bolduc before dropping out of the race in May.  

At the Jacksonville Public Education Fund forum, Bolduc said that her current company, Keys Educational Resource Center, was “absolutely not” a conflict of interest. She said she only makes $20,000 a year from her homeschool consulting business.

“I am not in competition with the school system,” she said, adding that she has been providing “one-on-one tutoring” to students who “were not properly served by Duval County Public Schools.”

Bolduc’s campaign has emphasized her public school teaching experience.

School safety concerns

Duval County is participating in the state’s Guardian program, created after the Parkland school shooting, which allows firearm-trained school employees to carry weapons on campus.

Mannion said she is “absolutely not” in favor of arming teachers. “I think it’s one thing to have trained law enforcement officers on site,” she said. “I think it is another to ask teachers to arm themselves when that is not what they signed up for.”

Bolduc said she supports the Guardian program because there are situations where trained law enforcement officers aren’t around. 

“There are too few officers. Most schools have one, and sometimes a second that might be part-time,” Bolduc said, adding that in the absence of an officer, there is “no one to secure the building at various times.”

Bolduc said there’s not enough funding for the right amount of officers at schools. The Fraternal Order of Police, the local police union, has endorsed her 

Bolduc wants stiffer consequences when students fight, advocating that students should be arrested more often for fighting.

In contrast, Mannion serves as a volunteer judge for Duval’s teen court diversion program, which aims to offer teens accused of misdemeanors an opportunity to make reparations for their actions as an alternative to incarceration. First offenders typically get a citation and have to do community service while repeated offenses can result in criminal charges. 

Mannion proposed expanding mental health programs through partnerships with community agencies.

Politics in education

This is Bolduc’s second bid for the District 7 seat.  She ran in 2016 against Hershey and came in third.

Bolduc said the COVID pandemic changed the district’s culture and now students are two or three years behind. She said she is concerned about dropping attendance rates.

Bolduc’s campaign this time is bolstered by endorsements and contributions from Republican elected officials and right-leaning organizations and political committees.

Kevin Montero Diaz, a district employee who’s finishing his degree to become a teacher, has found Bolduc’s endorsements concerning. 

“I think school boards need to be an independent voice for teachers, for students, and for parents,” he said. “Politics should not be in our school board.”  

Bolduc, who has supported the DeSantis administration’s education agenda, told The Tributary that teachers should not be involved in teaching certain topics, particularly related to gender and sexuality.

She said students could talk about those topics, but “teachers do not have the right to impose their point of view on any of those things on the kids.”

Bolduc also objected to those who characterize the removal of books from school libraries as a book ban.

“No one’s banning books, OK,” she said. “You can get it in any public library. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it at any bookstore.”

Earlier this year, DeSantis scaled back the state’s book-removal policy, limiting the number of books that could be challenged. This came after over 3,000 books were challenged in 11 school districts in the second half of 2023 alone. 

Leaked footage of bare shelves in Mandarin Middle School’s library went viral last year when the district was removing books to review in the wake of the state policy.

Mannion said the district’s removal of books led to teacher confusion about what was and wasn’t allowed in their classrooms. This, she said, put students at a disadvantage and limited what books were available to them.

Rather than allowing some parents’ objections to lead to the removal of books for all students, she said the district should develop a notification system that allows individual parents to approve or deny their own children’s requests to borrow books.

That, she said, would be “true parent choice.”