Tuesday night’s re-election of an incumbent Miami-Dade school board member and the election of a new school board member will allow conservatives to maintain its five-member majority in the nation's third-largest school district.
Sitting Miami-Dade County School Board member Mary Blanco — who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — won reelection to her seat in District 7, which encompasses much of the southwest region of the county, including Kendall and South Dade. She beat political newcomer and tech consultant Maxene "Max" Tuchman by more than 30 percentage points, according to preliminary results.
Joseph "Joe" Geller, a former legislator in the Florida House of Representatives and North Bay Village, won his first race for school board against former school board member Martin Karp, according to preliminary results. Both ran to replace Lucia Baez-Geller who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in U.S. House District 27.
In the last four years, school boards statewide have become a battleground for partisan culture wars, with political appointees and elected board members battle it out along party lines.
Miami-Dade is Florida's largest school district.
District 7: Mary Blanco
Blanco was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last January following the departure of former School Board Member Lubby Navarro. Navarro resigned last December in response to a new state law on financial disclosures, and was later arrested on charges of grand theft and fraud for allegedly spending upwards of $100,000 in taxpayer money on personal items.
Blanco works as a guidance counselor at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami. Though school board positions are nonpartisan, Blanco has aligned herself with the Governor and his Conservative politics. Her campaign ads have included endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police Union and the Christian Family Coalition of Florida.
She claims to support school choice, or putting taxpayer funds towards students enrolling in private and charter schools. Her campaign material also states she supports “female athletes,” a reference to opposition towards allowing transgender athletes in schools to compete in girls sports.
At an election night watch party at Sports Grill Kendall put on by the Miami Dade College Democrats, Tuchman echoed the sentiment she heard from voters that the school board needs to do away with politics and focus on kids, rather than parents.
"There is a lot of want and need for nonpartisanship and for people to work together for students," Tuchman said. "Everyone told me they're sick of the extremism and they want change and I think that is still true."
Jose Rios, a teacher at South Miami Senior High, was at the watch party in Kendall. He said he wants change on the school board, hoping for less talk about political issues and more focus on funding for school supplies and teacher pay.
"We want a school board that's more practical. That sees the economic limits of the system. That sees that they invest in things that don't bear the fruits they hope for," Rios told WLRN in Spanish.
Tuchman, who launched and sold an online literacy platform for young children called “Caribu” and previously taught at Miami Northwestern Senior High, said she is not done with the political arena. She has left herself open for other political campaigns in the future, though she says her focus will remain on education.
District 3: Joe Geller vs Martin Karp
Geller will now represent Miami-Dade County School Board District 3 in the northeast part of the county, from Aventura to Coconut Grove.
Though school board races are nonpartisan, Geller is a registered Democrat. He told WLRN he would be spending his election night with the Democratic Party contingent on Miami Beach. In interviews, Geller said he plans to keep partisanship out of his time on the school board.
Geller will join the four-member left-leaning minority on the nine-member board. With Blanco's victory, the school board has maintained a five-member majority block of votes that tend to line up with Conservative policies and values.
Geller was a member of the Florida House Education Committee and the ranking Democrat on the K-8 subcommittee. His priorities, according to an interview with the Miami Herald Editorial Board, include raising teacher salaries and addressing the school district’s teacher shortage.
Karp served on the school board for 16 consecutive years from 2004 to 2020. He did not run in 2020. Geller beat Karp by nearly 10 percentage points, preliminary results show.
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