DeSantis’ Plan to Unseat Woke School Board Members in 2024

Discover the list of school board members targeted by DeSantis for 2024.

Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican in Florida, and education advocates have identified several “woke” members of the state’s school boards as candidates for replacement in the upcoming 2024 elections.

On Tuesday, DeSantis met with the Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, Paul Renner, the Florida Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz, and the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, to talk about a list of school board members they would try to get rid of in the next election.

A representative for Mothers For Liberty, Sierra Kostick, confirmed the meeting in an email to NTD. Kostick also disclosed the names of the fourteen school board members that the group is collaborating with DeSantis’ political team to remove from office. Among those are:

  • Representative District 3 in Brevard County, Jennifer Jenkins
  • Rep. Kelly Coker, CD1 of Duval County
  • Cindy Pearson, District 3 in Duval County
  • A representative for District 1 in Hillsborough County, Florida, Nadia Combs
  • Peggy Jones, from Indian River County; Jessica Vaughn, from Hillsborough County;
  • Indian River County 5th District Candidate Brian Barefoot
  • District 9 in Miami-Dade County, where Luisa Santos resides
  • A representative for the 1st and 2nd Districts of Pinellas County, Laura Hine
  • Rep. Eileen Long of Pinellas County, FL, District 4
  • Representatives Jack Kelly (St. Lucie 2), Anita Burnette, and Carl Persis
  • Sarasota County Third District Representative Tom Edwards

Remarks About the Selected School Board Members

The Florida Standard was provided with remarks from the Tuesday meeting in which school officials voiced their disagreement with individual members of the school board for their alleged support of school masking and their perceived left-wing political objectives.

The authorities claimed that Jones made every effort to delay the elimination of pornographic reading material in classrooms. A familiar boast of Edwards’s is that he is “working from the inside to indoctrinate children with damaging, Marxist ideas,” as one source put it. Some in authority have labeled Burnette and Persis as “masker, transgenderism, wokeism” supporters. According to the critics, Jenkins displayed her contempt for parental rights on MSNBC.

According to Jones, their commitment to ensuring that all children in Indian River County receive a quality education contributed to their election to the county’s School Board.

DeSantis’s Pedagogical Effort

DeSantis’s involvement with the election of these 14 school board members is not his first. DeSantis had backed thirty-four people seeking seats on Florida school boards before the 2022 elections; 29 of them went on to win.

DeSantis has been vocal in opposing the spread of “woke” philosophy in Florida’s public schools. Along with the Florida legislature, he succeeded in 2022 in passing the Stop WOKE Act, which forbids the inclusion of critical race theory in K-12 curricula.

The governor of Florida has lately spoken out against an AP African American Studies subject in high schools, which his administration claims “lacks instructional value.” The course was altered in response to DeSantis’s objections; specifically, the sections devoted to “intersectionality,” “reparations,” “incarceration,” and “Reframing Early Black History in African American Studies” were cut.

The objection of DeSantis’s administration to the Advanced Placement African American Studies course has prompted accusations of “erasing black history” from several political observers.

The Stop WOKE Act explicitly forbids schools from trying to teach that individuals are naturally sexist or racist under their race or sex or that members from certain races or sexes bear responsibility for the actions previously committed by other members of their race or sex. DeSantis and his administration have contended that the AP course violated this law.