Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs will be the county school board’s new chair. “We are unstoppable ... when we put aside our differences,” she said.
Wins easily over 3 contenders
Teresa Jacobs, Orange County’s mayor for the past eight years, on Tuesday easily won her race for chair of the Orange County School board.
Jacobs had more than 52 percent of the vote, compared to about 26 percent for Nancy Robbinson, the candidate running closest to her in the fourperson race. A candidate needed at least 50 percent of the vote to win outright and avoid a runoff election in November.
The other candidates, Matthew J. Fitzpatrick and Robert Prater, had about 17 percent and about 5 percent of the vote respectively.
Robbinson has been on the school board for the past 10 years, representing district 6, which stretches through a north-central chunk of the county, including College Park, Maitland, Pine Hills and Thornton Park. Fitzpatrick and Prater are both Orange educators.
In a speech to supporters, Jacobs pledged to “do better” for Orange County teachers, who she said are crucial to students and who haven’t gotten the respect or pay they deserve. She also said she’d work with other community leaders to push back against state laws that harm public education.
“We are unstoppable … when we put our minds to something, when we put aside our differences,” she said.
She could not seek re-election as mayor because of term limits. She’d previously served eight years on the Orange County Commission.
During campaign events she admitted some residents were puzzled by her decision to run for school board. The post confers to her less power and less pay than the mayor’s job.
The school board chair has the same duties as other board members, charged with setting policy for the nation’s ninthlargest school district, but board members have no day-today authority over school operations. The chair and other board members will earn $44,443 this year compared to the mayor’s salary of $162,838.
When told she was seeking the post, people often told her, “Huh? I thought you were running for higher office,” she said. But, she added, “The way I look at it, I am.”
Jacobs, 61, said she’d always been committed to public schools — her four grown children all attended Orange schools and she was a PTA
mom years ago — and was eager to use her experience and stature to push Tallahassee for better education funding, among other issues.
The school board race is nonpartisan. In campaign mailers, Jacobs, a Republican, didn’t mention her affiliation but said she had earned the endorsements of community leaders from both parties.
She will replace Bill Sublette, who has been chair for eight years and isn’t seeking re-election. Sublette is the first one to hold a position that is unique in Florida.
In the state’s 66 other counties, school board members choose a chair from among their ranks. But in Orange, since 2010, the chair has been elected by voters countywide.While Orange’s chair also has the same duties as the other school board members, in a tie vote the chair is the tiebreaker. The chair works with the school superintendent to set the board’s agenda, though other board members have input, too. The board sets policy for a district that has more than 200,000 students, nearly 200 campuses and almost 20,000 employees.
During the campaign, all four candidates said they were frustrated by education policies dictated by Tallahassee and by what they view as limited funding for Florida’s public schools. All four listed school safety as a top priority, hardly a surprise in the wake of the Parkland school shooting in February. They all spoke about boosting teacher morale and pay.