Summary

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Florida has led the country in passing aggressive and restrictive laws that outlaw inclusive curriculum, limit teaching and learning, erode welcoming school environments, and increase privatization. Florida was the birthplace of the controversial Moms for Liberty organization, becoming the face of parental rights debates as well as contentious, sometimes violent school board meetings. Florida State officials have continued to foster an atmosphere of fear by publicly shaming, chastising, and threatening school board members and superintendents who express their own political opinions or take contrary policy stances. 

Through in-depth interviews with 17 school board members in 11 Florida counties, we examine: What are the new bullying tactics and how do they work? What are the personal, professional, and public impacts of these new bullying tactics? How are school board members responding? And what threat do these tactics pose to public education and democracy?

Key Takeaways

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New Tactics: Extra-Legal Tactics, Targeted Lawfare, and Autocratic Legalism

• Top Florida State officials, including the Governor, the former ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Commissioner and Florida Department of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø commission members, employ extra-legal tactics (i.e., tactics that are neither officially legal or illegal), like surveillance of school board members’ social media and board meetings, threats on social media, and humiliation at State Board of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø meetings, to shame and pressure school board members into silence and compliance. 
• The State also engages in targeted lawfare, which weaponizes the legal system to harass opponents. School board members describe the actual or threatened loss of funding, removal from office, and audits and investigations as retaliatory actions that Florida State officials use against local school board members and school districts that deviate from their preferred policy agenda.
• Additionally, the State of Florida uses conventional laws to undermine and dismantle democratic systems, a process known as autocratic legalism. Through mandated letters to parents, expansive use of removal and appointment powers, voucher and charter privatization of public funding, and a series of seemingly innocuous procedural laws (e.g., term limits, Sunshine Laws) the State undermines local control over education and participatory democracy.
• The report also finds that bureaucratic actors, such as school board attorneys, superintendents, and professional associations, are reinforcing state pressures, and encouraging and rewarding silence rather than strengthening deliberation.

Impacts: Personal, Professional, and Public

• School board members described significant personal impacts from the State’s bullying tactics, including installing surveillance cameras around their homes, being afraid of being targeted with violence, limiting their own personal freedoms, and seeking therapy.  
• A majority of school board members reported professional impacts from the state bullying tactics that make it difficult for them to advocate for what matters most for children’s education - great teachers, ample resources, and welcoming school cultures. They describe no longer using social media, having to work behind the scenes, avoiding vocal opposition, and choosing not to run for re-election.
• An overwhelming majority of school board members describe public impacts of the new bullying tactics that include a widespread atmosphere of fear and numerous educational opportunities lost, including thousands of library books, equity and inclusion programs, LGBTQ+ student supports, age-appropriate sexual health education, honest history teaching, student clubs, and caring teachers and counselors.
• Several school board members explain how Florida’s culture wars have weakened trust in public education for conservative and liberal families alike. At the same time, the State is rapidly expanding its voucher program and experiencing enrollment declines due to federal immigration policy and a decreasing birth rate. School board members warn that these challenges pose an existential threat to Florida’s public education system. 

School Board Members’ Responses

• Largely, school board members have decided to “work behind the scenes” to avoid the ire and attention of the State. The marked shift towards quieter “behind the scenes” advocacy may mean that constituents, particularly those most historically marginalized, lose an important source of information and voice.
• Other school board members describe creative responses to the bullying tactics including refocusing attention on what is best for kids and ignoring distractions, reframing “parental rights”, and adopting legal interpretations that are less restrictive than those advised by school district attorneys.  
• While the report demonstrates the challenges and risks of being a school member, nearly half of the school board members interviewed describe the importance of being vocal advocates at this time. 

This study shows that these new bullying tactics by Florida State officials have been largely successful and will likely be used to advance their education priorities to privatize much of public education and to control the content and manner of education being received by those who remain in public schools. Public education as an institution, a value, and a promise is at risk.

Florida is truly our canary in the coal mine. Understanding the varied ways that local policymakers in a democracy experience and respond to the evolving extra-legal and autocratic tactics of the State, identifying similar patterns elsewhere, and learning effective responses is critical to defending public education and the public sphere.

Introduction to the Study

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Florida has led the country in passing aggressive and restrictive laws that outlaw inclusive curricula, limit teaching and learning, erode welcoming school environments, and increase privatization (Mitchell, 2025; Payne, 2026; Pollock, 2023).

Since 2020, Florida has enacted more than 20 laws, regulations, and executive directives that restrict teaching or discussion of race, racism and LGBTQ+ topics; outlaw visible support for LGBTQ+ students; encourage widespread book removal and banning from school and classroom libraries; further weaken public sector unions including teacher unions; encourage legal action and complaint procedures against teachers and schools; and expand universal vouchers (See Appendix A). 

Florida was also the birthplace of the controversial Moms for Liberty organization that initially fostered heated arguments over masking and COVID protocols that led to name calling, violence, and threats of violence towards school board members for supporting mask mandates and defending books (Craig, 2021; Natanson & Knowles, 2023). Moms for Liberty quickly galvanized conservative women under the banner of “parental rights” to target local school board members, ban books, and push the passage of their subsequent anti-WOKE, anti-LGBTQ, anti-DEI (anti- diversity, equity, and inclusion) education agenda. 

While board meetings have quieted, State of Florida officials, such as the Governor and former State Board of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Commissioner, take up the baton from advocacy organizations like Moms for Liberty, making national and local headlines for publicly harassing, chastising, and threatening school board members and superintendents for sharing their political opinions or taking particular policy stances (e.g., Baptiste, 2025; Jordan, 2025; Ogles, 2025).

We sought to understand these actions and their effects on school board governance. In this study, through in-depth interviews of 17 Florida school board members in 11 counties, we examine Florida’s growing use of extra-legal tactics, targeted lawfare, and autocratic legalism against school board members. Specifically, we examine the experiences of board members, their perceptions of the impacts of these tactics, and the threat they pose to public education and democracy.

Findings from this study are important not just for Floridians but for all Americans. Once states like Florida pass educationally restrictive laws, states across the South and Midwest have followed suit, with local school boards or state legislatures in progressive states, also passing copycat laws (DeWitt, 2026; McCann & Miranda, 2026). For this reason, studies of Florida education policy provide important warnings and lessons for the rest of the country. 

Definitions

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Extra-Legal Tactics = actions that operate outside the scope of established legal frameworks - meaning they are neither explicitly legal or illegal (e.g., bullying or threats).

Targeted Lawfare = the weaponization of the legal system to harass and harm opponents (Gloppen, 2018).

Autocratic Legalism = the use of the legal system to weaken, undermine, and dismantle democratic systems of governance as a whole (Scheppele, 2018).

Methods

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This study relies primarily on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 17 current Florida school board members in 11 counties, representing nearly 50% of the student body in Florida. Study participants were identified based on media and social media coverage of these incidents and in partnership with local organizations working with school board members. Twenty-one school board members were invited to participate in the study. Seventeen of those invited participated. An overwhelming majority (88%) identified as women and 35% as Black, Latino, or Asian. Nine represented majority Republican counties, and eight represented majority Democratic counties.

Interviews took place between February and May of 2026. They were conducted via Zoom and typically lasted 60 - 75 minutes and were recorded and transcribed. In Dedoose, a software program, the transcribed interviews were first coded with a priori thematic codes matched to the research questions (e.g., new tactics, impacts, mechanisms, responses) and then coded for patterns and themes arising from the data. Facts, like dates, events, communications, and laws described in interviews were checked against relevant local and state news media coverage, social media tweets by former ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas and Governor Ron DeSantis, and documents like emails, Commissioner of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø letters to parents, and Florida Department of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø memos. 

While this is a relatively small sample of school board members, our work seeks to reveal and document these new tactics targeting school board members. Future research should explore how systematic and widespread these tactics are.

Research Findings

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New Tactics

The school board members in this study spoke to us from their homes, some battle worn and fatigued, some energized, some defeated. For several years now, the Florida Legislature and executive branch have passed laws and issued orders that create a sense of fear and isolation across public education. 

[The state is] going to pass these rules or laws and they're going to be vague enough to make you feel a sense of fear. And they don't want to be specific. It's like, all the book ban laws, right? Instead of the state just having a system that does it statewide, every single individual school district has to make these determinations about every single challenged book by themselves. And the only thing is, well, if you get it wrong, we'll come down on you. 

Through our interviews with school board members, they revealed how Florida State officials are using extra-legal tactics, targeted lawfare, and autocratic legalism to coerce obedience to the vague and restrictive laws previously passed. Extra-legal tactics are actions taken outside of established legal frameworks, meaning they are neither explicitly legal or illegal (e.g., threats, political pressure, and bullying). We use targeted lawfare to describe the use of legal procedures to harass and harm opponents. Autocratic legalism refers to the use of existing legal systems to weaken, undermine, or dismantle democratic systems of governance, such as the independence of duly elected officials, separation of powers, and citizen participation.

These extra-legal tactics and targeted lawfare lead to severe personal, professional, and public harms and are becoming accepted as the new normal. Our data also suggest that rather than acting as professional and technical safeguards against the amassing and abuse of executive power, school district lawyers, superintendents, and even professional associations often double down on top-down mandates and pressures, advising conformity and cautioning against dissent. These new tactics of intimidation and fear erode public control over public education. 

Figure 1 shows the range of tactics used against school board members. While not every school board member interviewed experienced these tactics, many of those who did not experience them were acutely aware of school districts and board members who did. This chart shows school board members who were personally targeted in dark blue, and other school board members who spoke of these tactics used against others in light blue.

Figure 1.
State Bullying Tactics 

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Extra-Legal Tactics: Surveillance, Threats, and Public Humiliation

Florida State officials (e.g., former ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, Governor Ron DeSantis, and Florida Department of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø members) use extra-legal tactics to punish and silence opponents and reduce resistance to their favored policies. These extra-legal tactics range from surveillance of school board meetings and school board members’ social media, threats on social media and public humiliation at State Board meetings. 

Eight school board members discussed being made aware that their meetings and/or social media were being monitored by the Governor and the Florida Department of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø (FDOE). One recounted the constant surveillance and the consequences for stepping out of line: “We are constantly having conversations with the board of ed who is like, ‘I'm sorry, I heard you say [blank] at a school board meeting. I'm gonna need you to show up to Tallahassee.’” The FDOE Commissioner singled out school board members with threatening letters posted on X (formerly Twitter) (see Figure 2). 

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On several occasions, Commissioner Kamoutsas demanded school board members and superintendents join State Board of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø meetings, where they were publicly reprimanded and intimidated for their political opinions or their district’s policy stances. In one case, a superintendent was chastised for retaining certain books deemed inappropriate and agreed to remove several dozen book titles from his district without review (Johnson & Ferrell, 2025). And for the first time, in 2024, the Governor issued an election target list of 14 school board members to vote out of office after a strategy meeting with Moms for Liberty leaders (Singman, 2023). A school board member expressed that this was unheard of and “a line that had not been crossed before.”

Well, we have a Florida Department of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Commissioner who was appointed by the Governor…loves to legislate on Twitter. So he'll send nasty letters to two districts and before the districts can even receive them, he's already put them on Twitter for the world to see. And he's very heavy handed. Like he'll just say, “We expect you to do this. You better be in compliance.” If you're not in compliance, they'll drag you before the State Board of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø. And you'll just get screamed at by them.

These extra-legal tactics amplify a political culture where “they’ve made it okay for people to name-call, to be mean, to be nasty,” which school board members noted has become commonplace. Once personal attacks, whether a product of campaigning or state officials’ comments and allegations, reached social media, they activated a broader public and local extremists. School board members described themselves or other school board members being accused of killing babies on stop sign stickers and supporting genital mutilation of children; having pedophilia written in weedkiller on their lawns; and experiencing death and rape threats. One school board member recalled, “And I just think it was very, really unnerving for people that were saying, ‘Oh, we're going to cut your nipples off and do this.’ I mean, just all types of emails.”

Targeted Lawfare - The Weaponization of the Legal System to Harass and Harm Opponents and Control Dissent 

Six school board members described being punished by the State through established legal channels for their political opinions or positions. This targeted lawfare included threats to withhold state funding, threats of removal, and state audits and investigations.

[T]here were 12 school districts that fought against [the Parental Bill of Rights that was read to prohibit mask mandates]... and so that dirty dozen, they [FDOE] actually the following year threatened to defund them. They threatened to take away their salaries during that time. All of them dropped the mask thing eventually… but, they were under a pressure cooker for years after that. And probably still they get surprise audits. The DOE would send groups of people in to check to see that they were being compliant with this or that. And, basically making their lives hell.

Wielding the power of the state budget, the Florida Department of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø threatened to withhold state funding to counties that continued mask mandates in 2021 (Hernandez & Shivaram, 2021). School board members shared other instances of the FDOE withholding or threatening to withhold state special education funds or not awarding previously awarded state grants. 

Additionally, the Florida Constitution allows the governor to remove and replace elected officials for a range of subjective reasons including malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, and incompetence (Fla. Stat. § 112.51, 2025). It is considered “in its scope… unique among the states” (Parsons, 1962). This power expanded in 1998 when Florida voters empowered the governor to appoint the State Board of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, which then appoints the Commissioner of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, formerly an elected position. 

Although removal powers have applied to school board members since 1885, Governor DeSantis has used this power more aggressively than his predecessors, removing dozens of officials, including school board members, in blue counties and replacing them with his own appointees (Klas, 2023). As a result, school board members take the threat of removal seriously and many (11 out of 17 school board members, or 65%) discussed its impact on their decisions and actions. For a majority of school board members who discussed this type of removal (8 out of 11, or 73%), their response was to abide by the law, work quietly behind the scenes, distance themselves from targeted colleagues, and weigh each decision against removal.

[I]n a way, every decision that I make, it's like, “Okay, is this stance worth removal? Like, is this hill the hill that I'm going to die on?” And sometimes that's a yes. And sometimes that's a, well, I can't really do anything about this issue anyway.

Six school board members also shared concerns about school districts that were the target of a large number of audits, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and investigations from the state that they attributed to political harassment.

Autocratic Legalism - The Weakening and Dismantling of Democratic Processes and the Centralization of Power

Alongside extra-legal tactics and targeted lawfare, this study finds that Florida State actors engage in autocratic legalism (Scheppele, 2018), which is defined as the intentional use of the existing legal system to disrupt and dismantle democratic processes and centralize power. These targeted tactics are bolstered by seemingly innocuous institutional and procedural changes that the State of Florida has passed, which vastly broaden the power of the executive branch and diminish the power of local democratic governance. Figure 3 provides a timeline of Florida’s culture wars-related policies alongside the procedural laws impacting school board governance and deliberation.

Figure 3.
Florida Culture Wars & Procedural Policies Timeline 

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Note: This is a non-exhaustive list of significant culture wars-related legislation impacting K-12 education as well as legislation impacting school board members and local governance. See Appendix A for more information on these laws.

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As mentioned above, the Florida Constitution gives the governor expansive removal and appointment powers over any state or local elected officials not subject to impeachment (reserved only for the lieutenant governor and cabinet members). School board members interviewed shared that many of the Governor’s appointees in education are supporters and beneficiaries of charter schools and school vouchers, and have attempted to weaken public education from the dais. In several examples, DeSantis appointees to school boards have decried the failure of public schools, alleged district malfeasance and corruption, and sought to replace superintendents, despite little evidence to support these claims.

They [the school board members] were removed. [The Governor] got to appoint…. [T]hey were there to disrupt things. And they fired the new superintendent and they called for all these investigations…. So yeah, it was very difficult to govern.It was very difficult. Mainly they were just very bombastic and they were just there to disrupt things.

While the culture war attacks and accusations of malfeasance were often the impetus for replacement of school board members, the important policy implications of these replacements were felt in response to charter school co-location proposals and other privatization pressures. In 2023, the Governor signed into law a universal voucher bill, providing approximately $9,000 of public school funding per child to attend private schools, regardless of income (Dollard & Santis, 2025; Florida HB1, 2023). The Florida law, touted as a model voucher legislation for the country, lacks income requirements for recipients, regulations, or public accounting and oversight. It also includes an acceleration clause that requires voucher funding to increase year after year. Some estimates suggest that this voucher system cost Florida public schools over $4 billion dollars in the 2024 - 2025 school year and was projected to increase (Dollard & Santis, 2025). Rather than increasing access to lower income students to attend private schools, school board members share that many private schools just increased their tuition by the size of the vouchers, and over 69 percent of voucher applicants were already not attending public schools (Dollard & Santis, 2025; Florida HB1, 2023). A state audit also found nearly $230,000 of taxpayer dollars are unaccounted for in 2025 (La Roche Pietri, 2025). 

In 2025, the Florida State Legislature expanded the Schools of Hope program that requires public schools with vacant space to allow charter school entities to co-locate on their campuses (Dollard, 2026). Public schools are required to assume the costs of co-location, which can include food, maintenance, electricity, safety, and transportation of students. School board members described the combined financial pressures of the voucher and charter co-location laws as posing an existential threat to public schools. 

While the State of Florida has for years used democratic processes to chip away at public school budgets and local control through voucher and charter co-location programs, the State has also passed other seemingly innocuous procedural laws that have shrunken school board policymaking powers over public schools. For example, Sunshine Laws are designed to ensure government transparency, but Florida’s Sunshine Law is one of the strictest in the nation and prevents two elected officials on the same board from talking about official board business outside of a properly noticed public meeting (“Florida FAQs,” n.d.). This study cautions that in the current political climate, where policy elites choose to ignore government transparency (Cuillier, 2025), the strict adherence to this law at the local level contributes to school board members being isolated and less able to defend themselves against the new state bullying tactics. 

So, just in Florida, one of the things about local boards… is we have basically Sunshine Laws and the people who wrote these laws, it doesn't apply to them, which is great [said with sarcasm]. But basically, we're not allowed to talk about anything we might possibly vote on outside of a publicly noticed meeting. So I can't just call up a colleague and talk to them about an issue.

In addition, a 2022 law set new term limits for school board members, first moving from no term limits to a 12-year term limit, and later amended to allow only 8-years in office (Rado, 2023). The State also recently passed legislation to put a referendum on the ballot that would make one Florida district's superintendent an elected position rather than one hired by the school board (Kumar, 2026). School board members experienced these as attempts to limit school board power and subjecting local school board races to political whims.

Finally, the Florida State Legislature passed a couple laws in recent years further limiting the organizing power of public sector unions (except for police and fire fighter unions) (Matat, 2026; Perry, 2026). These laws continue to increase the threshold participation for formation or recertification as a union, and prohibit the automatic deduction of dues from members’ paychecks, making it difficult for unions to function. School board members discuss the ways that Florida’s unions, representing teachers, custodians, and others, have been “maligned,” weakening their ability to advocate for pay increases, strong and healthy public schools, and professional and inclusive teaching and learning conditions. In recent years, these laws have centralized power in the Governor and top state officials and weakened checks and balances. 

Bureaucratic Actors Doubling Down on Compliance

The study finds that bureaucratic actors like school board lawyers,  superintendents, and professional associations were reinforcing and amplifying state pressures, and encouraging and rewarding silence rather than strengthening deliberation. Four school board members discuss how school board attorneys regularly advise them to over comply, and at times caution, warn, and threaten them against speaking or acting in ways contrary to the Governor and State Board of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø. 

The attorney worked to try to find a way around our own [book approval] procedure…. Essentially, he would find ways to [remove the books], and then he would say, “[W]ell, you know, I know that that's not really the policy, and that's not necessarily what the law says, but the State Board of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø can do whatever they want, so we just need to do what they say, because if you don't, he might target you, and he might remove you from office, and there's really nothing we can do.” So that's just an example; and then board members were kind of, like, “Okay, you know what, it's not worth it, I'm not going to fight about these [several dozen books], so fine, just pull them,” which I find frustrating, because every time you give a bully what they want, they're just going to take more.

In these ways, the organizational actors whose job it is to provide training and technical expertise to elected school board members were risk averse and compliance oriented. More than just condoning the bullying, extra-legal tactics and lawfare, these entities were actively conveying the controversial policy directives and amplifying threats to ensure compliance, even when they contradicted existing local policies and laws.

At times, this compliance orientation extended to existing professional associations that welcome, orient, and provide support for school board members in the state. One school board member explained that their professional association was unable to be as helpful as they could be, and “you lose your voice in the organization” because “when there is a group in power, there’s the ability to alienate them” and the association can find itself accommodating those in power.

Another school board member explained that the association’s independence and professionalism had been “compromised” and had become an additional avenue for enforcing top-down state policy priorities. 

Stasi [Kamoutsas]... he came to our, you know, [association] lunch over the summer… and basically told all of us for five minutes: “You will implement this. We will get you if you do not do it.” We're all having lunch. And this person comes in…. That is what we're dealing with. 

A school board member described how discussing taboo subjects, like equity or concerns for students of color or other marginalized students, limited leadership opportunities in the association and members within the association engaged in peer surveillance of other members. The school board member attributed this behavior to the desire of association members to avoid ire and attention from the State. Our study points to the importance of professional associations in states like Florida to do more to support all of their members in these contentious political times.

Impacts

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School board members shared a pervasive atmosphere of fear among educators in the state and a negative impact on teaching and learning.

And librarians, if you ask them, they have a lot of fear. They have fear of what they have in their libraries. They have fear of anyone donating. They have fear. There’s a lot of fear that’s wrapped up…. So there’s just like this weird [thing] where people are very fearful of what they’re teaching, how they’re teaching.

[I]t's over-compliance, over-censoring, restricting with books. I think the same is true with certain subjects…. I know a teacher who [teaches] American History. And she said she's had to just remove discussions from her normal teaching curriculum because she's afraid that students will think that it's too, we just have all these restrictions on, we can't say things that make people feel bad…. [T]his was a couple of years ago, basically teachers had to teach that slavery was a benefit to slaves. And so anything that made it seem like slavery was bad, for example, teachers are too afraid [to teach]. 

This, and other stories, are consistent with national studies that have demonstrated an overall rise in fear and self-censorship across the nation’s teachers (Woo et al., 2022) and increasingly poor mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ students (Nath et al., 2025). Specifically, in the most recent Trevor Project survey, 36% of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year and 90% of LGBTQ+ youth said that recent laws, policies and debates have caused them stress or anxiety (Nath et al., 2026). One Florida-specific study has shown widespread negative impact on teachers and students, including fear, stress, and burnout, leading to potential public school exit (Pollock, 2023). 

In addition to these previously identified impacts of the culture wars, this study documents the personal and professional impact of Florida’s recent extra-legal tactics, targeted lawfare, and autocratic legalism on school board members and the implications for public education and the public (see Figure 5). School board members shared that there remained a pervasive state of fear facing educators and school board representatives, resulting in hard personal and professional choices in response. While a sizable number of those interviewed vowed to remain vocal advocates, much of the evidence points to a shift towards quieter and behind the scenes advocacy, and pervasive caution and silence. 

Figure 5.
Personal, Professional & Public Impacts of Recent State Bullying Tactics 

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Personal Impacts

The extra-legal and autocratic legal measures documented in this study had significant personal impacts on school board members themselves as well as their ability to fulfill their job responsibilities as elected officials. Four school board members described personal experiences of fear, six described significant personal and psychological impacts, and six described ways that these tactics and the aftermath limited their personal freedoms. School board members described a pervasive fear that they and other educators learned to function under. Some, especially those publicly targeted by state officials, described installing surveillance cameras around their homes, being afraid of being targeted with violence, and seeking or needing therapy. 

On a very personal level, I was basically scapegoated…. I was getting death threats, emails, phone calls…. But, um, it was, yeah, it was horrible. I had a police officer parked across the street from my house for two weeks because of the death threats. We had to install security cameras. 

Many of the school board members interviewed rushed quickly over their stories of being targets of extra-legal tactics and lawfare, and emphasized resilience and courage instead, but when asked to provide further detail, some became emotional and described the negative impacts these tactics have had on trust, family relations, and overall mental health. One school board member described receiving threatening mail at their home and thinking they might prefer to die, “Like, you know… it was scary…. I think it’s put me in a place where I operate from a little bit more fear than I used to.” 

Not every school board member we interviewed directly experienced these extra-legal or autocratic legal tactics. But, even if they had not, many school board members had heard of these tactics being used against their peers. Consistently, school board members described the fear of becoming the next public target of the State and the ways this limited their personal freedoms including their ability to use social media even to keep in touch with out-of-state family and friends, and their ability to serve the public.

What has changed dramatically is my social media. I basically don't comment on anything ever. I don't say anything to anybody ever. So, it has impacted how I stay in touch with friends [out of state] and family out of town. And, you know, how I interact with the world, because, yeah, they did effectively chill my speech in that way. Because my personal life is apparently not mine anymore.

Professional Impacts 

Most school board members stopped using social media or severely curtailed their use of social media, making it more difficult to engage their constituents. Many school board members also explained that they weigh decisions to speak out or to take particular policy stances against whether they may face possible removal from office or threats to state funding. The majority of school board members interviewed chose to “work behind the scenes” to avoid state scrutiny. An implication of “working behind the scenes,” however, is that they chose not to speak out publicly when teachers were suspended or immigration enforcement threats were pressing.

A school board member described the ways that the new state laws enforced by the State’s new extra-legal and autocratic legal tactics removed local decision making authority and required school board members to do things that did not align with their values and those of their constituents.

I feel like they've taken a lot of the autonomy away for my job. I think that they have removed my ability to do my job effectively and represent my constituency the way they would like me to represent them because they've been a little heavy handed in removing my authority. So there is no local control. Like they control everything that we do. And even if it's not in law, like the DOE will call us and be like, “You have to do this, you have to do that.” And we're like, no, we don't. It's not law. And if you don't do it, then they're very retaliatory. You know, all of a sudden we're not getting grants, we're getting audited.

As a result of the new tactics and the fear they engendered, nine school board members described not being able to advocate for important educational priorities. Many school board members explained that they were less outspoken, more cautious, and relied on doing things behind the scenes. Other school board members described specific limitations to their ability to do their jobs, explaining the challenge of not being able to discuss ways to better serve diverse student bodies that were already struggling but are now struggling even more - like Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ students. One school board member described this phenomena and the retreat from advocating for the most marginalized students, especially by those who might not be from those communities.

So, to understand the ramifications of everything that's going on… you can't have diversity, inclusion and equity anymore. You can't have anything that is even related to including, you know, diverse students on anything. You have to change all that. That's, that's nuts…. And if you do, you get money taken away. How many schools need money removed from them? We need all the funding we can get. And so…we fight for our students and then we don't fight for our students. It depends on what you look like. 

Another member described receiving a dozen emails a week from their constituents asking them to discuss and pass district policies that laid out a response to federal immigration enforcement, and being unable to do so. And when they are told to enforce state laws against use of preferred pronouns, school board members shared instances of districts suspending a teacher with little recourse or opposition.

The data also suggested a growing acceptance of a narrative or norm against vocal advocacy. State education officials accused a couple vocal school board members of “clout chasing,” creating pressure on school board members to avoid vocal advocacy and to adopt similar critiques of colleagues and peers. Other school board members described the ways that they chose not to resist vocally but chose to work behind the scenes. While this appeared to be a common response to the State’s legal and extra-legal attacks, the unspoken and accepted consequence was that constituents lost an important source of information and vocal advocacy that they might have expected from their elected officials (discussed more below).

Finally, four school board members chose not to run for re-election due to the pressure and attacks against school board members. These school board members expressed a combination of deep fatigue, sadness, and guilt for their difficult decision.

I don't think a lot of us have fully dealt with it…. I know the end for me is near…. [speaker starts crying]. I fully understand why I decided not to [run]. Yeah, a lot of it is I'm just so tired. And I don't know, I don't see an end anywhere. Like, I don't see it. And, at one point, I have to decide. … What am I doing? Is all this fighting just making me feel good?... I'm super proud of the work that I've done in [the County]. But it just feels like I'm super guilty. [W]hat if I had fought more? Is this on me? I just don't see a way out of it right now…. And a lot of people are just like, I can't, physically and mentally. I don't have it. I don't have anything left. 

Public Impacts

These new state tactics significantly impact the public by limiting educational opportunities, making schools less safe and inclusive, and creating delay and waste. 

There is a sense that people bend over backwards to not get the attention of the State…. If you can avoid a tweet from the Commissioner or the Governor, that's for the best. But if they can find one little thing, they'll find it. So people operate out of fear of them and they behave accordingly. Like when we used to have a…  DEI department basically, and they changed that name. And then most of those people are getting laid off now. And they got rid of all the positions that support LGBTQ students.

As school board members made difficult personal and professional decisions to not be as outspoken on the dais or on social media against harmful laws or directives, work behind the scenes instead, or chose not to run for re-election, their constituents lost their elected voice and vote in local government, and the public lost a diversity of opinions and perspectives. Most importantly, teachers and students lost vocal advocates for their interest in academic freedom and diverse, inclusive, fair, and welcoming teaching and learning environments. 

The extra-legal and autocratic legal tactics initiated by powerful state actors, alongside a weakening of the checks and balances that would have been provided by an independent and vocal school board, impacted teachers and students. School board members shared stories of LGBTQ+ and ally teachers being suspended and threatened with removal, transgender bathrooms closed, DEI and LGBTQ+ support units dismantled, entire classroom libraries removed, thousands of book titles banned, student clubs like the Gay Straight Alliance or Latinos in Action shut down or without teacher sponsors, and teachers and social workers leaving their positions feeling that they could not reconcile their personal and professional ethics of care for students with new state laws. Additionally, LGBTQ+ and immigrant families expressed worries to some school board members that schools would not protect them, contributing to enrollment declines.

State laws and directives on curriculum (e.g., outlawing DEI, dictating acceptable versions of history, mandating anti-communism curriculum, and changes to sexual education) also limited curricular adoptions and delayed textbooks. Some districts were left with only one math textbook to adopt. In others, children spent the first two and a half months without a social studies textbook or missed an entire year of sex education waiting for state approval.

Finally, many school board members believed that the continuous negative attention on public schools compounded by voucher-driven funding loss, seeded concern and doubt in the public’s mind about the future of public schools.

You have super progressive parents who are saying, “Oh my gosh, the public schools in Florida are not going to be able to talk to my kid about inclusion or belonging, and that's terrible. I'm going to look at other options.” Right? And then you've got hyper conservative parents who are saying, you know, believing all this propaganda about like, “Well, public schools are going to indoctrinate my child, or my child's going to be exposed to things I don't want them to be exposed to,” and then they're leaving the system.

And what's really happening is you are dismantling public education from every angle…. It is like, everyone is being ingrained with all this terrible noise about public schools and making other choices…. So combine that with right-sizing, combine that with declining enrollment, combine that with funding issues. It feels like a full-on attack on public education. It's so scary. It's like a win-win for them. It's just, the chaos just works. 

This negative attention and resulting harms were concentrated in particular school districts, often larger, more Democrat-leaning districts, and those serving large numbers of students of color. The effects, then, of these new bullying tactics is likely felt unevenly across the state, raising concerns of discriminatory state action. Of the school board members interviewed for this study, those who experienced the most direct forms of these tactics were overwhelmingly from blue or purple districts (6 out of 9). While the new tactics and expanding autocratic legalism impacted all school board members, the most severe attacks on local school board autonomy occurred in 6 of the 11 districts in the study. Together these districts serve 42% of the Florida public school population and are serving more students of color than the remaining 5 districts in the study where there was less direct targeting.

School Board Members’ Creative Responses

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School board members interviewed describe important ways they’ve learned to respond to these new tactics. The most common was to work behind the scenes directly with staff (12 out of 17), which included raising constituent concerns, asking questions, setting up meetings between district administrators and student-advocacy organizations, and providing examples of policies from other districts.

Like if I want to solve something, I'm doing it behind the scenes or I'm talking to legislators or I'm talking to my staff and going, “I won't vote for this. I'm not going to do this.” So I'll do it through my votes. I'll do it through conversations. I'll do it by trying to reach out to people and be like, “Do you know what this is going to do, the implications of that?” So I do it by doing my job, not by posting all over social media.

Figure 6.
School Board Member’s Responses 

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A smaller group described the importance of continuing to loudly resist laws they deemed unfair. They explained the importance of defending public education in this time and the important role of elected officials in informing the public.

I feel like my main job is to educate the public of what's happening because I'm scared what's going to happen in Florida is going to spread around this country. And I'm very worried about that and I'm wanting to fight for students in the future. So I'm not worried about it [the bullying].

School board members also described the importance of ignoring the culture wars when possible and refocusing the narrative on what is best for kids. They described listening politely to public comment but distinguishing distractions from the real work at hand, which most described as ensuring adequate funding, paying teachers enough for them to stay in the profession, protecting electives, and ensuring that students felt welcome and free to just be. The issues that school board members described being most moved to speak out about usually involved threats to funding, charter co-locations, and vouchers. These threats to public education funding caused the broadest alarm, but this response raises concerns about who will speak out when specific groups, like transgender, immigrant, or Black students, are being targeted.

Several school board members also discussed the importance of reframing the parental rights argument, one of the most compelling aspects of the culture war efforts. They described themselves as parental rights advocates too who wanted to make sure a minority of parents’ concerns and prohibitions didn’t become the mandate and prohibitions for every family. They supported parental involvement in classrooms and curriculum and school-family partnerships that support the education of the child. They also noted that when the State of Florida mandated specific curriculum like anti-communism education and the benefits of slavery to enslaved people, parents should use the parental opt out procedures to exercise their own parental rights. 

Finally, a couple school board members described the importance of searching for and adopting a different legal interpretation of the laws. A school board member reminded others, “But what you have to remember is that the lawyer's perspective is ‘We don't want to get the district sued, we don't want to get you removed,’ and so all of [their] advice comes from those places.” Aided by civil and legal rights organizations in the state, they proposed less restrictive interpretations of the law, asked questions, and pushed back on school district attorneys’ often fearful interpretations of law.

Conclusion

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This study documents the array of bullying tactics used by Florida State officials to enforce compliance from locally elected school boards to their anti-DEI and ant-LGBTQ+ agendas. These tactics spread fear and caused school board members to work behind the scenes, avoid social media, and weigh their decisions to advocate or not against threats of removal. School board members shared that the culture war allegations against public schools and, at times the perceived inability of schools to protect all children despite racial and gender identities, or immigration status, hurt the public’s trust in public schools.

These culture war outcomes exacerbated enrollment declines from demographic shifts and the loss of billions of dollars from unregulated and unaccountable voucher policies. Florida school districts have cut elective programs in some districts and closed schools in many districts, ultimately feeding the cycle of concern and distrust of public schools. In this way, many school board members described the recent bullying tactics as the latest in a long series of attacks on public schools that threatens its very existence.

While the findings of this report show the challenges and risks of being a school board member at this time, nearly half of the school board members interviewed also described the importance of speaking out loudly and explained the importance of defending every child’s right to be who they are, teachers’ professional decisions about how best to serve students, and the public support of public schools. 

[W]e then have to stand up in our capacity as elected officials to our legislators, because the students often don't have a voice… and employees are in a precarious situation, because they need to work…. So we kind of have to be able to take the bullet and take the punch for them, and punch for them because… some people are scared to speak out or hesitant because they don't want it to impact their current job or future opportunities to advance.

And you may not be able to do it for the long haul. We can do two terms now, it's term limited. They passed that law. So you get tough and stay strong, do two good terms, and then train up somebody else so they could take over for you. But we have to stand up and take public education. We just got to, at whatever cost.

This study documents the evolution of Florida’s multi-pronged strategy to unsettle and privatize public schools, describing the most recent use of extra-legal tactics, targeted lawfare, and autocratic legalism to silence and coerce local elected officials into submission. The study also describes the ways that other seemingly innocent laws have made this bullying easier, concentrating power in the governor and stripping power from local governance bodies. It points to the ways that the State of Florida has used these different tactics to fan the flames of the culture wars to feed charter school and voucher expansion. This study shows that these tactics have been largely successful and will likely be used to advance their education priority agendas to privatize much of public education and then to control the content and manner of education being received by those who remain in public schools. Public education as an institution, a value, and a promise is at risk.

Florida is truly our canary in the coal mine. Understanding the varied ways that local policymakers in a democracy experience and respond to the evolving extra-legal and autocratic tactics of the State, identifying similar patterns elsewhere, and learning effective responses is critical to defending public education and the public sphere.

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Appendix A

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