Mary Fischer was the product of a Catholic school on Long Island. She said she valued her experience there, able to talk with students from the public school across the street and make friends she still talks to today. Though none of her family members were educators and she never attended a public institution, that did not stop her from serving the public school system for more than 50 years.
She started teaching in the 1960s. After moving to Cape Coral in 1977, she taught fourth grade classes and worked in Exceptional Student Education, utilizing her master’s in psychology. Joining the Lee County School Board, she served three four-year terms as the representative for District 1.
However, as time passed in her position, she couldn’t help but notice what she said is a disconcerting trend that ultimately drove her not to run for reelection in 2022.
Progression of a partisan plight
“In my experience, for 10 of the 12 years that I was on school board, it was nonpartisan,” Fischer said. "Politics did not play a part or were not needed in our decision-making process and our advocacy for the community and students.” Regarding what she sees as a trend toward partisanship, “I feel like it’s, in a way, designed to get rid of public education.”
Fischer said it’s having a harmful impact on virtually all aspects of public education, from funding to curriculum to lived experiences of students.
“I think that it diminishes the education they receive, the opportunities to participate on a global level in different educational activities, and I think that the rhetoric that’s going on is impacting the parents, teachers, and even the children because it’s negative and divisive,” Fischer said.
This mindset is why Madelon Stewart, and some other Lee County residents, founded The Purple Group in 2022, a nonpartisan advocacy group for public education with the slogan “blue plus red equals purple.”
“We do not have an ideology that we adhere to,” Stewart said. “We believe in students’ right to learn. We believe in parents’ rights. We believe in educators as professionals, to be decision-makers, and we think that those in power in the school district should do what they say they want to do.”
Stewart said the Group believes that public schools, which educate all students, are the bedrock of our ability to participate in our multicultural, multiethnic democracy.
They feel one of the largest problems facing public schools across the state originates from political ideology in decision-making by the Florida Legislature, governor, state Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education.
“Politics are part of the democratic process,” Stewart said. "Now, what we’re lacking is the process. We are getting edicts from on high (and) school boards are just basically becoming a rubber stamp. The idea that you can have a group discussion where citizens, voters, people, parents, taxpayers can have input into how the decisions are made doesn’t exist right now.”
They said one impact of the progression of politically influenced decision-making in education legislation can be attributed to an increase in funding for Florida’s school voucher program, creating a budgetary shortfall for public schools and “tying the hands of local school boards,” Stewart said.
Voucher variation
“What we have seen in Florida is that vouchers were, at first, a very small portion of funds taken from public schools, but now an enormous amount of each public school’s local budget funds vouchers for basically unregulated schools,” Stewart said.
Florida established its School Choice (voucher) program in 1999 with the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) allowing students in failing public schools to attend private schools with better education, provided by state funds.
This paved the way for multiple programs to follow suit, aimed at providing more families with further opportunities to send their children to private schools and other forms of education.
First came the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program created by the Florida Legislature in 2001.
FTC Scholarships work by the state government providing tax credits to businesses and companies that contribute to nonprofit scholarship funding organizations (SFOs). SFOs then take applications and decide who receives scholarship funds based on various criteria.
In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court struck OSP down in Bush v. Holmes, finding three reasons for its unconstitutionality, the primary reason being OSP’s violation of Article IX, Section I (a), of the Florida Constitution, stipulating a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public school,” and how the program was diverting public funds from public school systems. FTC, however, remained active.
Fast forward to 2019 when Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 7070 that created the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program and revised FTC scholarship applicant requirements.
Notable programs under this branch include the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES-EO) and the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA).
These types of scholarships, however, are more controversial in where they get their funds, compared with FTC scholarships.
“Florida taxpayers are paying out of pocket for an industry that is unregulated, and there’s no transparency, and there’s no accountability,” Stewart said. “Vouchers have expanded to cover private schools, homeschooling, religious schools, for-profit schools, and micro-schools, which they never did.”
Requirement revamp
Stewart said it does not help when you decrease scholarship applicant income requirements.
In 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1, which reduced income restrictions and enrollment limits, allowing almost any Florida family with a student in elementary, middle, or high school to receive vouchers containing the amount their local public school would have received.
Stewart said this takes more vital funding away from the public school system funding program, the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). Stewart is not the only one who feels this way.
Paula Porter is a university professor for instructional design and online learning and a member of the Purple Group. She said this problem is metastasizing into further complications.
“We’re losing teachers’ rights now because of that (loss of funding),” Porter said. "They’re cutting programs, and one of the other issues we talk about is the new schools being built (in Lee County). How are they going to fund them once they’re built?”
She is concerned that funds diverted to voucher programs will leave new institutions without adequate funds to maintain equipment, pay faculty and staff, and maintain daily operations.
According to the National Education Policy Center, initial costs in Florida for voucher programs were between $200 and $700 million, but by the 2023-24 school year, those costs jumped to between $2.8 and $4.2 billion.
Porter said there’s another problem: transparency.
Vanished funds
“There was a whole big mention about the fact that the voucher system is shy of multiple millions of dollars,” Porter said. “Nobody knows where the money went, and nobody even seems to care.”
An operational audit for the funding of the 2024-25 school year completed by Florida Auditor General Matthew Tracy revealed that the state did not know where about $270 million in funds were within the FES voucher program due to a lack of tracking students in accordance with state law paired with the program’s rapid growth.
Senate Bill 318 of 2024 aimed to combat these discrepancies with an effort to bolster transparency and efficiency. It passed the Senate in January 2026, but did not make it through the House, killing the bill.
Porter said that until concrete legislation is introduced to create more transparency among school budgets in conjunction with educational scholarship programs, more funds will continue to drain from public schools to voucher programs.
Two steps forward, one step back?
Adding to that, Lee County School District's Change for Change, a program specific to the county's schools, is set to expire in 2028.
A referendum in 2018 asked Lee County voters whether to increase the sales tax from 6% to 6.5% for 10 years, where that “half penny” would be used exclusively to fund the county school district. They voted in favor of the measure.
“It has been vitally important to the economy of the Lee public schools,” Stewart said. "And now it’s coming up for renewal.”
For the 2025-26 school year, the Change for Change program has provided more than $103 million to Lee County Schools to date, with a total projection for the fiscal year of $115 million. In total, the half-penny sales tax has generated over $764 million since its inception.
“The half-penny tax has been an absolute lifesaver for Lee County Schools,” Chris Simoneau, the chair of the Independent Sales Surtax Oversight Committee (ISSOC), said.
ISSOC is a group created to ensure the sales tax is spent in accordance with the referendum, according to Simoneau.
“Without this three-quarters of a billion dollars, the school district would not have enough student stations, children would be going without laptops and teachers without SMART Boards, security in the schools would be weakened, and school buildings would be in much worse shape," Simoneau said. "This tax has ensured that the school district remains on an upward trajectory.”
Members of the Purple Group have pushed for its continuation.
Stewart said that it’s up to the superintendent and the school board to decide whether to put another referendum for a continuation of the half-penny tax on the ballot.
To date, the district has not taken any action to continue this source of revenue, according to Stewart.
Book drought
Marge Cox is an independent educational consultant who retired after 40 years in public education. She has two master’s degrees, one being in library science. She is also a member of the Purple Group.
The issue she stressed is that political ideologies have clashed with curriculum choices, causing an increase in book bans. She draws from her expertise as a professor teaching a class called Collection Development.
“Collection Development is where students are taught how to develop a collection, so that it’s representative of all points of view,” Cox said. “It’s not your library; it supports all points of view. That’s gotten lost in the book banning.”
She, and the rest of the Purple Group, said they believe this hinders students from gaining a well-rounded perspective with the ability to think and analyze critically about topics they are bound to encounter in their adult lives.
After all, Cox said parents have always had the right to determine what their child is allowed to read. Blanket bans impact parents who want their children introduced to certain topics in a controlled setting.
“I’ve dealt with parents on a one-to-one basis,” Cox said. “’I don’t want my child to read that book.’ ‘OK, I’ll mark their account to not. That’s fine. Your call as a parent, absolutely.’”
But she said this is where it goes awry.
“It is not your call to say nobody should read this book,” Cox said. “As a trained professional, I’m appalled at book banning.”
Every year, according to Porter, schools across the state must report any book removed by June 30. During the 2024-25 school year, more than 400 books were banned across the state alone, with some notable names such as “The Notebook” and “The Help.”
Porter said this is cultivating conditions for another problem to become more severe.
“The mental health of our students today is horrifying, and we’re taking away one of the means of actually helping them identify with their issues as not being alone in the world, and that’s something that we’re taking,” Porter said.
Fischer said the impacts may not be immediate but are likely and that society at large is sacrificing some of the future generation’s capability to navigate a complex, ever-evolving society. “The ability to adapt, to problem-solve, and function in society … is impacted by limitations, and not providing them the opportunities to explore and ask questions,” Fischer said.
Fischer said this also impacts teachers as they are essentially backed into a corner, left with fewer options to provide students with content.
“I’m hearing from people who contact me, who are mostly former educators or current educators, that they feel like they’re limited in what they can do and say, and just can’t function appropriately or productively under those conditions,” Fischer said.
‘It’s not the Republican school district, the Democratic school district…’
Kevin Daly was an ESE teacher who taught for 21 years at the Royal Palm Exceptional School. He has held the position of president of TALC, the Teachers Association of Lee County, for eight years.
He said he also sees the trend of politics in school board decision-making is getting worse and feels for the students caught in the crossfire.
“In the past 10 years, it’s certainly gone that way, including the new elected superintendent,” Daly said. “I mean, our legislative delegation bragged about making that a partisan thing. They specifically said their goal was to make a partisan superintendent election.”
In 2022, a referendum was put on the ballot for voters of Lee County after Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 497 into law at the end of the legislative session.
The referendum asked residents whether to repeal a 1974 resolution, which would change the position of school board superintendent from an appointed to an elected role.
Article IX, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution states, “In each school district there shall be a superintendent of schools who shall be elected at the general election in each year the number of which is a multiple of four for a term of four years; or, when provided by resolution of the district school board, or by special law, approved by vote of the electors, the district school superintendent in any school district shall be employed by the district school board as provided by general law.”
Sixty-two percent of voters decided to make the school board superintendent’s position an elected duty.
While this transition is permissible under the Florida Constitution, Daly said it’s not conducive to student success.
“I think the importance of that is it’s a public school, right?” Daly said. “It’s not the Republican school district, the Democratic school district, the NPA school district, and I think the best way to make decisions that are best for everybody, you have to come at it with the attitude that we educate everybody’s children…all the kids in Lee County.”
Typically, when superintendents are appointed by school board members rather than elected by the general population, board members consider a candidate’s educational background and experience rather than their political affiliation, both Stewart and Daly said.
“Dr. (Denise) Carlin is an elected superintendent, and she has a wealth of experience across all levels,” Daly said. “She was a classroom teacher, building-level administrator…I mean, she’s done it all. So that’s a good choice. But there’s always the chance that you get somebody who doesn’t know anything.”
Florida is one of 12 states that currently elect school board superintendents.
No skin in the game? Your vote still matters
Voter turnout for local school board elections is historically low because of a misconception Daly aims to clarify… even if you don’t have skin in the game, your vote still matters, and not just because your tax dollars are being spent.
“The reason is, we’re the eighth-biggest district in the state,” Daly said. “It’s a $2 billion budget of your tax dollars. These are the community members’ tax dollars that fund public schools. When companies want to move here, like when Hertz wanted to move, the first question they will probably ask is, ‘what are my tax breaks,’ and the second question they’re going to ask is, ‘what is the school system like?’”
Daly said it’s an economic competition to get businesses to come down here, and, since Southwest Florida relies heavily on tourism and hospitality, an area like this needs to maintain that type of diversification.
“They want their kids to go to a great school system, just like everybody else does,” Daly said.
The verdict
Overall, Daly, Stewart, Porter, Cox, and Fischer all said the source of this trend comes from the polarizing political rhetoric across the country and that this is only hurting the students in the long run.
“I think that the climate in the country now is, in my opinion, less than desirable,” Fischer said. “I’ve never seen it quite like this before, and I’m just concerned that they (the children) may not be getting the education that they could be getting because of the issues that are plaguing our public schools.”
They said that until the nation can regain the integral skill of civil discourse, we are bound to see this trend of politics in education decision-making increase.
“I think another important part of communication is listening, and I don’t feel like that is done enough,” Cox said. "And not just listening and then going on with what you were doing anyway but listening and looking for solutions that will appeal to parents, to teachers, to students.”
In coordination with the Lee League of Women Voters, the News-Press and WGCU, a forum did just that on July 9 at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Water School.
The voter registration deadline for the primary election is July 20. More information can be found at Florida’s 2026 primary election.
The Lee League of Women Voters also has a website.
To see who showed up at the forum, who did not, and what new faces could be representing your district, visit Lee County school board forum featured six of 11 candidates; 'conservatives' absent.
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.
