Three Duval School Board Seats Are Open Tuesday — and Every Candidate Is a First-Time Office-Seeker
Voters in the Beaches and Southside, the Northside and Northwest, and the Westside each pick a new School Board member on Nov. 3, in three open-seat races where none of the six candidates has held elected office before.
Below the headline races on Tuesday's ballot, Duval County voters in three parts of Jacksonville will choose new School Board members — and every seat is open. Reporting by the Florida Times-Union read this cycle lays out the three contests: in District 2, covering the Beaches and parts of the Southside and East Arlington, Donovan Bradley faces Donna Westrich; in District 4, representing Northside and Northwest Jacksonville neighborhoods, longtime educator Rhodesia Butler faces James Jacobs; and on the Westside, District 6 voters choose between Realtor Lindsey Denmark and Clarence James. Each race is a contest for an open seat between candidates who have never held elected office before, according to that reporting.
School Board elections in Florida are nonpartisan, but the reporting notes the partisan groups behind the candidates: the Duval County Democratic Party has supported Westrich in District 2 and both Butler and Jacobs in District 4, while Bradley, the Duval County GOP's executive director from 2021 to 2023, was listed in the party's 2026 voter guide of favored candidates. In questionnaires described in the reporting, Westrich described herself as moderate and Bradley called himself very conservative.
The new board members will take their seats as the district asks voters in the same election to renew the 1-mill property tax that supplements pay for teachers and other staff — a measure the district credits with improving recruitment and retention — and as the district comes off the first two years of earning an A grade from the Florida Department of Education, according to the reporting. Early voting in Duval County runs through Sunday, Nov. 1, before Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
