This story is part of a statewide partnership of 27 nonpartisan newsrooms and universities working to help Florida voters make informed decisions in the 2026 school board elections. Learn more about the Florida Elections Reporting Partnership.

Lee County School District is facing a projected $92.4 million budget shortfall next school year, forcing officials to spend more than $45 million in capital reserves to help close the gap — while still cutting hundreds of teaching positions and programs. On August 18, voters will choose between an incumbent who says the board is already reining in spending and a challenger demanding a forensic audit to account for every dollar.

The race in District 6 is one of two at-large school board seats and it pits two candidates with sharply different ideas about how to raise teacher pay, improve education outcomes or make immigrant students feel safe attending school. Although nonpartisan, the race also has the contours of a Democratic-versus-Republican contest given the candidates’ party registrations and the support they’ve drawn from partisan groups.

A former elementary school teacher for 20 years, incumbent Jada Langford-Fleming won her seat in 2022. Her challenger, India Palencia, a first-time candidate and substitute teacher in the district, says she started attending school board meetings around that time to voice her frustration with the board, accusing them of financial mismanagement.

“[The school board] had gone from two meetings a month down to one, and that cut public comment time substantially. When I went to the podium to speak, and I looked up, one of the board members was asleep,” Palencia said, recalling a school board meeting she attended. “I thought ‘These people don’t care. Nobody’s listening to us. And we need someone up there who’s listening.’”

That’s when she first decided to run, she says.

Langford-Fleming told The Florida Trib the board is listening, and making time to meet with parents.

“[Board members] also have one-on-ones with our superintendent, and a lot of that communication is about what are you hearing, what emails are you receiving that people may not bring up in public comment,” she said.

Budget challenges 

The Lee County school district has a $2.9 billion budget, yet it’s facing overspending by $92 million in the 2026-27 fiscal year, which has already resulted in teacher layoffs and a loss of student programs.

Both candidates are campaigning heavily around their different approaches to accountability.

Langford-Fleming said she is focused on fiscal discipline and points to her record.

“I have stood up for taxpayers from the get-go, and we have reined in spending. That’s why there were so many cuts made at the district office. We’re operating on a much more fiscally conservative budget,” Langford-Fleming said. “You can’t keep living on a bloated budget of money that doesn’t exist.”

Palencia said that if elected she will call for a full forensic audit of the budget. The Lee County School District releases an annual financial report from unaudited data that includes general spending categories.

“We don’t have a line item budget posted at the school district level, so that needs to be published. And our public needs to know where every single penny is going. Right down to how much we spend on toilet paper,” Palencia said. “I’ve come to understand your budget reflects your values. The values that our board exhibits today, they’re not placed on the classroom.”

Declining enrollment in county public schools

Lee County School District enrollment data for June 2026 shows it lost over 1,800 students from the prior year. The declining student population accounts for over $17 million of the budget shortfall, since the state provides funding to each public school per child per year.

Both candidates agree the state’s school voucher system is contributing to the declining enrollment.

“I’m a supporter of school choice. I believe that parents know what’s best for their children, and sometimes that may not be the public school,” Langford-Fleming said. “But it also in turn has kind of pushed the public school district to finally become, to really focus on being competitive with our private and our charter schools rather than being complacent.”

Palencia said she also supports parents’ right to choose, but wants more oversight of the school voucher money. An audit released in December 2025 showed that $270 million in state funds set aside for around 30,000 students’ school vouchers were not correctly tracked by the state.

“[Because of the] voucher system here in the state of Florida, we have kids who are leaving the public school system now. Interestingly enough, they come back … but we have that money that leaves and it doesn’t,” Palencia said. “Almost $300 million this year, our state lost in voucher money, not knowing where it went. So that’s not unique to our district. That is happening statewide.”

Immigrant families fear ICE

Palencia also believes that federal immigration enforcement activities are scaring immigrant families from bringing their children to school.

“Having my kids in a school that is primarily immigrant families, I saw that firsthand,” Palencia said. “I also saw families asking other families, “Can you sign a form that makes you a legal guardian over my kid in case I get picked up by ICE?”

Langford-Fleming said she hasn’t heard anything to support that claim.

“I really don’t know where she got information like that,” Langford-Fleming said. “We’re following the law here in the state of Florida. We’re definitely following the law in Lee County. Immigration issues are outside of the realm of the school district.”

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office had the highest concentration of ICE encounters in Florida since August 1, 2025, according to state data.

Low teacher salaries

Florida ranks last nationwide in average teacher pay at $56,663 per year, according to the National Education Association. Palencia said that many teachers and school staff members don’t make livable wages and can’t afford to live in the county.

“It makes for a bad situation that trickles down into the classroom,” Palencia said. “We have kids who are not meeting educational standards. Half of our kids don’t read on level, and they don’t do math on level.”

Langford-Fleming said the school board has prioritized salary raises for teachers.

“We’ve given historical raises … and we’re continuing to give raises year after year,” said Langford-Fleming, who worked as an elementary school teacher in the district for 20 years. “We do have some more challenging schools that are harder to fill, that had high vacancies, and through the incentive program, we were able to make sure that we have teachers in those classrooms.”

In the last academic year, the Lee County School Board established the Teacher Incentive Initiative to offer up to $9,000 bonuses to teachers of critical subjects, like English and math, in high-risk schools. The board recently approved an expansion of the program, authorizing up to $10,000 in additional incentive pay for the 2026-2027 school year.

Palencia said the incentive program fails to address the teacher pay problem.

“Instead of doing these incentives that pit teachers against each other, leave many teachers out, and only last for one year, we need to take that money and reinvest it in a five-year plan to address the teacher pay and also address the wage compression issues that we have,” Palencia said.

Different approaches to student health and wellbeing

Palencia is also running on a promise to increase the number of mental health providers the district hires to make services available in every school.

“What we see today is you will have a caseworker, counselor, mental health professional, or psychologist, working four and five schools. There’s no way they can support all of those students in any meaningful way,” Palencia said. “When you have someone for every school to do that, the quality of health support goes up exponentially, and that obviously impacts all of the educational outcomes.”

Langford-Fleming said increasing school safety has helped improve those outcomes by giving students, and their parents, peace of mind.

A few months into her first term, Langford-Fleming pushed for enhanced school safety efforts, such as the “Guardian Program,” which put armed and trained volunteers in school patrol positions.

“Great relationships with our state legislators and our local state legislators has also given us the opportunity to be able to put OPENGATE at every one of our facilities, which is a weapons detection tool,” Langford-Fleming said. “We’ve also got to think about our students that are on our buses, making sure that they are safe. So adding bus patrol cameras to our buses has allowed us to have, and parents, a little more confidence that their kids are going to get to and from school safely.”

Party politics in a nonpartisan race

School board races are nonpartisan, but both candidates have drawn party-line endorsements with a stark contrast in how much each has raised in campaign donations: Palencia has raised $45,521 with $2,750 from PACs that historically support Democratic candidates. Langford-Fleming has raised $75,107 with $11,000 from similarly conservative PACs.

“I am proud to say that I’m a conservative Republican. I have been ever since I could vote. I do realize that this is a nonpartisan race, but our ideals are so vastly different on certain issues,” Langford-Fleming said. “I am a faith-based Christian woman, and I’m going to make decisions based on my faith, based on my moral compass, and I’m always going to put families and children first.”

Palencia, a registered Democrat, said she doesn’t want party politics to distract from the focus of the position.

“I’ve never really been into politics until I decided to do this, so it’s been a bit of an education in the politicization of a nonpartisan seat,” Palencia said. “This is about kids. What I do find from voters is that this is not a partisan issue. I don’t cherry pick who I’m talking to when I’m at events or talking to people. I hear from people of all walks of life: Republican, Libertarian, MPA, Independent, Democrat, whatever — it doesn’t matter. They all want a good, strong public education for our community.”

Find your polling site and additional information at the Lee County Elections website, and vote for the District 6 school board race in the primary election on August 18.

Rhiannon is currently a journalism master’s student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and a summer 2026 fellow with The Florida Trib.