Lopez, Byrd win seats on Orange school board

Johanna López and Melissa Mitchell Byrd won seats on the Orange County School Board on Tuesday, according to unofficial election night results.

López, 46, is a Spanish teacher at Colonial High School and was the Orange school district’s teacher of the year in 2016, the first Latina to win that award.

She won the District 2 seat, earning 60 percent of the vote to David Grimm’s 40 percent. Grimm, 42, is a teacher at Innovation Middle School.

López said she decided to run at the urging of some former students and said if elected she’d make sure the school district paid attention to all the communities it serves. During the campaign, she said she wanted to ease frustration among teachers and give them more flexibility to make classroom decisions.

District 2 takes in a swath of east and southern Orange, including Avalon Park, Lake Nona and the neighborhoods around Colonial High. Daryl Flynn has held the seat since 2006 but did not seek re-election.

Byrd, 43, a homemaker and substitute teacher, won 63 percent of the vote in the race for the District 7 seat. Eric Schwalbach, 46, a math teacher in Lake County, won 37 percent.

Byrd replaces school board member Christine Moore, who resigned to run for the Orange County Commission.

District 7 includes the northwest section of the county, including the cities of Apopka and Ocoee.

During the campaign, Byrd said she wanted to improve student discipline and boost teacher morale, which would help improve the reputation of local schools. She also said she wanted to make sure the district’s innovative academic programs — such as kindergartento-eighth-grade campuses and magnet schools — were available in District 7 schools.

The two women will serve on an eight-member school board and earn about $44,000 a year.