Statewide term limits on Florida’s school boards are finally here.
The limits passed by Florida’s legislature and signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis are not the best one could hope for. State senators pushed for and got a 12-year limit rather than the eight-year limit preferred by house members.
Regardless, parents and children are better off with at least some legal limit on the tenure of board members and on their opportunity to abuse power — some curb in addition to the possibility of surmounting the overwhelming electoral advantages that incumbents typically enjoy.
Governor DeSantis agrees that the legislation reaching his desk should have been an eight-year limit.
“They did three terms . . . and I wouldn’t veto the bill just over that. But if it were a standalone measure, I would have insisted on just two terms for school board members because I think that’s enough time to go, serve, get stuff done.”
In 2018, the Florida Constitutional Revision Commission sent eight-year limits on school-board tenure to the voters as Amendment 8. But the Florida Supreme Court knocked the question off the ballot because the limits were combined with other measures to reform education, like more freedom for charter schools.
It is a near-certainty that voters would have passed the measure — a prospect that terrified those who benefit from rampant school-board corruption.
Sure, what has now been enacted is only a partial remedy. But it’s something.
I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that something good is better than nothing good.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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