Two Central Florida teachers are vying to represent Florida House District 37 in a November race pitting a veteran candidate against a political newcomer.
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The veteran, Robert Prater, a history teacher in Orange County Public Schools, is running as the Republican candidate endorsed by the retiring incumbent Rep. Susan Plasencia. The first-timer, Jane Aman, an English lecturer at the University of Central Florida and former Seminole County Public Schools high school teacher, is the Democratic candidate.
Florida House District 37 encompasses parts of Seminole County and north Orange County. The electorate is split roughly equally among Republicans, Democrats and no-party-affiliation voters, with the GOP holding a slight, 1,800-voter advantage.
Aman provided an interview to the Orlando Sentinel but Prater did not.
Aman said she wants to bring the qualities that make her a good teacher into office as a state representative. Being both an educator and a legislator means doing research, communicating well and being an active part of the community, she said.
“Like my door is always open for my students, it will always be open for my constituents,” she said.
While campaigning, the top issue she’s heard from voters is affordability. She wants to limit year-over-year increases to homeowners insurance, improve public transit access and expand Florida’s Medicaid and childcare programs to bring down everyday costs.
Proponents of Amendment 3 — which would create a $250,000 homestead exemption on primary homes by 2028 — say it could help with the cost of living by giving Floridians property tax relief.
Aman does not support Florida’s Amendment 3 ballot measure, but said she believes Floridians deserve a break on their taxes.
“People need property tax relief, but we need to approach it with a scalpel and not a baseball bat,” she said.
Aman said she wants to see more oversight from the Legislature of insurance companies — citing the Orlando Sentinel’s reporting on property insurers’ hidden profits.
“When insurance companies come to the state and say ‘We need to increase our rates because our profits are low,’ it needs to be clear that is actually the case, and we need to have those transparency measures in place,” Aman said.
As an educator, Aman said she’s seen the challenges facing Florida’s public education system first-hand. She said she wants to increase teacher pay and add more support staff, like literacy coaches, into schools. Those things cost money, and Aman said she’d advocate for increased state funding for school districts.
“Our budgets are reflective of our values, right? And if we truly value public education, then it needs to be reflected in our budget,” she said.
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Aman said she supports school choice, but there needs to be more transparency and accountability in the state’s voucher program, which provides scholarships for private schools or homeschooling services.
The state should not fund the voucher program by taking money from public schools. Public school enrollment is down across the state, causing school closures and mass job cuts. In Orange and Seminole counties, which Florida House District 37 encompasses, the districts have lost about 10,000 students combined this year and have cut hundreds of positions because of enrollment decline driven in large part by vouchers.
Aman has garnered endorsements from prominent local Democrats, such as Sen. Smith, Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, former Rep. Anna Eskamani, U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost, and Orange County School Board Chair-elect Angie Gallo. She’s also earned endorsements from groups such as Equality Florida, the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association and the Florida Education Association.
Prater previously ran for Florida House District 49 in 2020, losing to Carlos Guillermo Smith in the general election. He also ran for chair of the Orange County School Board in 2018, earning just 5% of the vote in a four-way race won by former Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs.
Prater is registered to vote in Florida House District 43, according to voter rolls, and had originally filed to run for that seat before switching to run for District 37 a day before the qualifying deadline. Rep. Plasencia later announced she wouldn’t seek re-election to District 37 and endorsed Prater.
Prater did not respond to requests for an interview, but did submit answers to a questionnaire sent by the News Collaborative of Central Florida. In the questionnaire, Prater said his top three issues were affordability, quality education and expansion of mental health care and substance abuse recovery services.
On affordability, Prater said he would “bring more industry into this area” and “expand the education and training that qualifies people for those jobs.”
When asked whether he supports Amendment 3, Prater wrote, “The first question at hand is whether I will vote yes or no” but did not give a definitive answer either way.
However, he wrote that audits of local governments showed “dramatic revenue growth alongside wasteful and unjustifiable spending increases” and said he appreciated how the amendment language maintains property taxes for schools.
Prater said he supports “streamlining” regulatory hurdles to get new homes built, calling government regulations and permitting rules a de-facto tax that makes housing less affordable. He supports private-public partnerships, such as One Stop Housing in Orlando, that have developers working with local governments to convert underused buildings into affordable housing.
Prater said he has “real concern” about the strain AI data centers place on local water and electricity supplies. He said the Legislature needs to protect Floridians from “shouldering the negative impacts on their quality of life.”
Prater has earned endorsements from the Florida State Fraternal Order of Police, the Associated Builders and Contractors of Central Florida, and the Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association.
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