Could Hillsborough Become The Next School District To Elect Its Superintendent?

By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix

October 24, 2025

TAMPA — Voters in Lee County elected their first school superintendent in five decades a year ago.

It came two years after voters approved a referendum changing the superintendent position to an elected one. For the previous 50 years, members of the local school board chose who would lead the district. In making that transition, Lee has joined the majority of school districts in Florida (38) that elect their superintendents.

But while that may be the norm in Florida, it’s a complete outlier in the rest of the United States. Among the more than 13,000 school districts in the country, Alabama is the only other state with elected school superintendents.

The state’s largest school districts (such as Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach) have their school superintendents chosen by their school board members. Now a Republican state lawmaker would like to make Hillsborough — the third largest school district in the state and seventh largest in the nation — the latest district with an elected superintendent.

Rep. Michael Owen, a Republican, represents southwest Hillsborough and northwest Manatee counties, presented a local bill during a Hillsborough County legislative delegation meeting Tuesday to accomplish the shift, subject to voter approval.

“I believe Hillsborough County should mirror the majority of the counties in the state of Florida and allow the parents to pick the CEO of their kid’s education,” he said.

When prompted about why he saw the need for such a change, he said he “had a problem” with the fact that the sitting superintendent is less accountable to the voters than he is to members of the school board.

“I believe that having more a independent superintendent will allow them not to necessarily do the wishes of the majority of the board, but the wishes of the parents of Hillsborough County,” he said — stressing that he meant nothing personal against the sitting superintendent, Van Ayres.

If the measure was ultimately approved by the Legislature and then approved in a referendum by the voters, Hillsborough would become the largest school district in the nation that elects its superintendent.

The proposal was attacked by Democrats and some public education advocates in the audience, who said they want less politics in the classroom. Florida voters rejected a constitutional amendment on the 2024 ballot that would have made school board races officially partisan (the measure did win 55% of the vote, short of the 60% required for passage).

House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa noted that Gov. Ron DeSantis appoints the state education commissioner — as has every governor for the past two decades. The last time that the state Education Commissioner was elected, it was Charlie Crist in 2000. The state revised its Constitution in 2003 to make the position appointive.

Rep. Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg, attacked the idea, calling it “the ultimate DEI move.”

“Because what we would find, more likely than not, is someone who may not be qualified and may not understand what is important to the people, and most importantly, the children of Hillsborough County when it comes to education,” she said, adding that she was concerned about injecting partisan politics into education.

“What this feels like is a power grab,” she said. “What this feels like is — and I’m going to say the quiet part out loud, because our county is shifting a different way — let’s make sure that we can encapsulate power, and that does not serve students,” she said as the audience cheered.

That change in the power structure of the county was also referenced by Julie Gebhards, a Hillsborough parent and member of Moms for Liberty. She noted that the Hillsborough School Board now consists of five Democrats and two Republicans. As an appointed superintendent, she said, Ayres has to answer to them to maintain job security, while the county itself is more balanced in terms of partisanship (Republicans lead Democrats in voter registration in the county by slightly more than 2%).

“I think it comes down to: Is our superintendent going to be accountable to our students or the board?” she said.

Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, said that while there is common ground that politics does not belong in schools, it is absurd to believe that this specific proposal would lead to an infusion of politics within the classroom.

“The reality is folks, that ship sailed a long time ago,” he said. “I can’t miss the opportunity to just sort of emphasize and draw the point that those arguments can be very easily turned and twisted in the exact opposite direction. So, what’s before you today is not that make-or-break.”

The delegation will meet again before the regular legislative session takes place in January to vote on the proposal. If approved, Rep. Owen will file the measure as a local bill in the House, where it will be assigned to committees and move through the process before going to the full House for consideration. House members are limited to filling seven bills each session but local bills do not count towards this limit.

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