Floridians rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have made school board races officially partisan, in a sign that voters are fed up with culture war issues in the classroom.

Change A state received 55% of the votes according to the voting results. He needed 60 percent to pass.

The vote means Florida will continue its policy of treating school board elections as officially nonpartisan. Voters approved a constitutional amendment to that effect in 1998.

“This is a new chapter in Florida’s culture war chapter,” said Zander Moricz, founding Executive Director of the SEE (Social Equity Through Education) Alliance, a nonprofit organization in Sarasota.

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“There is a very clear shared understanding among Democrats, Republicans, and nonpartisan voters that the best thing for our students is not political warfare in the classroom. “There is no partisan politics in our school boards, but instead educational leaders and professionals working locally to determine what is best,” Moricz said.

From now on, candidates will not be officially aligned with any party, and independents will be able to vote for any candidate for the school board. But political campaigns can still continue.

Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a slate of candidates for school boards, but two-thirds of them lost in the August election.

The Amendment One proposal was supported by Republican leaders in the legislature who said it would bring transparency to a process already divided along political lines.

But six newspaper editorial boards in Florida have recommended against it, and critics say it would harm children’s education by injecting state and national level politics into decisions best made locally.

“Stability is good for children. Consistency is good for kids,” said Meredith Mountford, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, adding that America has long been averse to partisanship in education because of its potential to create destabilizing changes whenever political leadership changes.

“The original founders of school systems believed strongly that there was danger in doing so for this very reason. “Every time a political party changed at the state or federal level, there would be major changes in education.”

The First Amendment proposal was first introduced to the legislature by Senator Joe Gruters of Sarasota. He said our goal is to increase transparency.

In Florida, where Republicans hold a majority in the legislature, proponents of Amendment One said it would help educate voters about the political parties of school board candidates.

“I think voters knowing their party affiliation would help them vote because most voters don’t know all the way from the president to the Senate to the Congress to the governor to local legislators to county commissioners to the school board. That’s too much,” said Rod Thomson, communications director for the Sarasota County Republican Party.

The word “partisan” in the proposed amendment may have made approval “an uphill battle because people have such a negative connotation of partisan,” Thomson added.

“I think people are tired of the culture war on school boards,” he said. “But both sides need to stop and unfortunately I don’t see that happening.”

Florida leads the nation in book bans for the second year in a row, with nearly 4,500 books removed statewide, according to a report this month from nonprofit PEN America.

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