Florida Politics33%
Alicia Farrant, Angie Gallo face off in Orange County School Board Chair race with big stakes 27%
By Gabrielle Russon55%
8/2/2026, 3:00:33 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Negativity Bias, and Ad Hominem, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 19.6% saturation with 273 hits. Analysis detected 1,067 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,391 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.6% and a BS Rank of 27% (18,629 of 25,290 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 73.70% of the article peer group.
Orange County voters will elect the next School Board Chair in the August Primary, but the race carries implications that extend far beyond the four-year term.
Whoever wins the contest — either Angie Gallo or Alicia Farrant — will lead a rookie School Board in hiring the next Superintendent to run Orange County Public Schools (OCPS), the eighth-largest school system in the country.
The District is facing uncertain times since current Superintendent Maria Vazquez , who has led since 2022, announced her retirement to take effect at the end of the upcoming 2026-27 school year.
“Putting a bad Superintendent in there could just create chaos,” Gallo said about the importance of finding the right replacement for Vazquez.
The Orange County school system is losing a steady leader at a time when public schools face an existential threat from declining enrollment and the rise of taxpayer-funded vouchers.
On top of that, the District is dealing with other issues, like upset parents over an e-scooter ban and ongoing teacher union negotiations.
“It’s really going to be important to have a courageous leader at the helm to make sure that we are selecting a Superintendent who’s focused on wholesome foundational education and really keeping the District focused on what matters most, which is education,” Farrant said.
Gallo and Farrant — polar opposites on the political spectrum and both currently serving on the School Board representing District 1 and District 3, respectively — are vying for the elevated role of School Board Chair to replace Teresa Jacobs , who is not seeking re-election.
Florida Politics spoke to both candidates ahead of the August election.
The School Board race is officially nonpartisan, but as with everything in Florida, politics creep into both the race itself and the job of overseeing pre-K-12 education.
Farrant, the most conservative member on the School Board and a member of Moms for Liberty, won the endorsement from the Orlando Regional Realtor Association and Republicans like state Reps.
Doug Bankson and Rachel Plakon .
Gallo has the backing of liberal Democrats like U.S.
Rep.
Maxwell Frost and state Rep.
Anna Eskamani , in addition to the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association.
Gallo accused Farrant of being more focused “on cultural wars and getting books banned and promoting her own ideologies” than educating children.
“I’ve always represented everybody in my county.
I welcome the diversity,” Gallo said.
“I’m not a MAGA.”
Meanwhile, Farrant charged that Gallo allowed books with what she considers inappropriate sexual content into public school libraries.
“I am a courageous mama bear who is fighting to protect my own children and the children of Orange County public schools to ensure that we have wholesome, foundational, commonsense education in our schools.
I cannot say the same for my opponent,” Farrant said.
“She has voted to keep explicit sexual content in front of our children, where I do not want that.”
Farrant was on the losing end when the Board voted July 28 to keep the book “The Beats” on the shelves for high school upperclassmen.
During the School Board meeting, Farrant argued the graphic novel depicts multiple sex acts as she read the page numbers of sexual scenes that concerned her.
“It is full of just abhorrent content,” Farrant said afterward.
“That is a book that at most maybe would be in a college class … but not for a leisurely check out at a library.”
Gallo said the book about the 1950s counterculture was nonfiction and depicted a disturbing, but true, history of real people.
The challenged book, which had only been checked out five times in 15 years, had been reviewed by media specialists as part of the District’s official review process, Gallo said.
“Last time I checked, Alicia was not a librarian or a media specialist,” Gallo said.
Gallo is the mother of two children who graduated from East River High School.
One grew up to become an OCPS elementary school teacher.
Farrant, a mother of five, had her two oldest children graduate from OCPS.
She declined to say whether her three youngest children are currently enrolled in OCPS for the 2026-27 year.
Gallo challenged Farrant on that point.
“It’s very well-known in our community that her three children do not go to Orange County Public Schools.
… Why are you running to be chair of Orange County Public Schools when you don’t even believe in public schools enough to put your own children there?
Why are you running to lead an organization that you don’t believe is good enough for your kids?”
But Farrant, who has appeared at Gov.
Ron DeSantis’ side at news conferences and lives in one of the blue counties in the state, countered.
“I don’t talk about my children, where they attend.
If you saw some of the messages that I receive, you also would be tight-lipped about your children.”
To make her case to voters, Gallo points to her longtime activism in education.
When her two children attended OCPS, Gallo got involved in a parents group at her children’s school, which eventually led to advocating in Tallahassee for legislation to mandate daily recess in elementary schools and prevent gun violence.
“I call myself an advocate, not a lobbyist because I never got paid to do any of that.
It was really because it was the right thing to do,” said Gallo, the former President of the Florida School Boards Association.
Gallo was on the 2012 Superintendent Search Committee that hired then-OCPS leader Barbara Jenkins — experience that will serve the community well now that OCPS is in hiring mode again, she said.
For Farrant, her background is in Christian ministries.
She and her husband operate a nonprofit that does work overseas.
It’s currently building an orphanage in El Salvador and also operates a men’s home, she said.
“It absolutely fills us with purpose,” Farrant said.
“We just really felt like we had to do something.
We couldn’t just sit by and watch people die on the streets.”
Farrant listed one of her top priorities as helping improve Orange County student literacy.
“When we have kids who are struggling to read — which right now over 40% of our kids are struggling readers — then we see that trickle into all the other aspects of education,” Farrant said.
“If we really want to excel and be the best in the nation, we’re going to have to focus on phonics and closing those gaps.”
Improving kids’ reading requires investing in teacher training and building community partnerships to add more support for schools, she said.
Not every student is going to go college, so OCPS also needs to introduce different paths at an earlier age so students can learn about the trades, Farrant said.
Education should not just be “sitting in an algebra class and wondering how that’s going to help them in life, but really having those hands-on classes,” Farrant said, like shop class or home economics.
For Gallo, her priorities are finding ways to recruit and retain teachers.
She also wants the District to create microschools — a school within a school — to focus on educating dyslexic students or offer Montessori-style learning, for example.
“There’s a Montessori school in Orange County that has a waiting list.
That tells me there’s a need and a desire from parents for children to have that model.
So, we need to put that model in our public schools,” Gallo said.
“The same with our Hillcrest school and our Howard school.
… So we need to replicate what’s working in those schools.”
Gallo sees it as a way to innovate at under-capacity schools and grow enrollment.
That idea could be a countermeasure to fight against charter schools aiming to take over space rent-free in underenrolled traditional public schools under the state’s controversial Schools of Hope program, she acknowledged.
School Board members’ annual pay is currently $50,000, the same starting salary for OCPS teachers.
Early voting begins Aug. 3 and runs through Aug. 16 in Orange County.
Election Day polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Aug.
18.
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