Orange County voters will elect a new school board chair next month for the first time in eight years, choosing between two very different candidates — one who runs a Christian nonprofit with her husband and made banning books she views as “pornographic” a centerpiece of her first campaign and the other a long-time PTA member and public school advocate.
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Both Alicia Farrant and Angie Gallo are already on the Orange County School Board, and both now want the countywide chair seat.
The next school board chair, who will succeed the retiring Teresa Jacobs, will help run a board facing budget challenges, declining enrollment, and teachers unhappy with limited pay raises and rising insurance costs.
The chair has most of the same duties as other board members and earns the same pay (about $50,000 this past year) but has the power to help set the board’s agenda and, in the event of a tie vote on the eight-member board, his or her side wins. The chair also runs the meetings. It is a position unique to Orange, as the 66 other county school boards in Florida elect their chairs from among their members.
The election will be decided during the Aug. 18 primary.
Orange County Public Schools is the fourth largest school district in Florida and the eighth largest in the nation, with an enrollment of more than 180,000 students taking classes on about 200 campuses.
Backgrounds and endorsements
Farrant, first elected to the school board in 2022, spoke out against OCPS’ mask mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, as a member of the conservative Moms for Liberty group, pushed the school district to remove books with sexual content, including one by the award-winning novelist John Green, who grew up in Orlando. She appeared on stage with Gov. Ron DeSantis in early 2022 when he signed a bill that provides for more parental scrutiny of school books and, since her election, has remained vocal about removing novels and volumes she finds objectionable.
She’s a mother of five and helps her husband with his Christian nonprofit, which aims to serve low-income communities in Central America. She said her two oldest graduated from OCPS high schools and all have “grown up” in the district but declined to say whether her three youngest remain in public schools.
She wants to bring “Godly values and principles” into government. “When I win this, the entire county — and I pray the state and the nation — will see that God always gets the victory,” she said.
Farrant currently represents the board’s district 3, an area that runs from south of downtown Orlando to the Osceola County line.
Gallo, first elected to the school board in 2018, is the immediate past president of the Florida School Boards Association and has advocated on behalf of public schools in Tallahassee for over a decade. She was long active in the Florida PTA, in both local groups and the statewide organization. She raised her two children in Central Florida, and both of them graduated from OCPS high schools.
“I understand the challenges that public schools are facing. I understand that we’re under attack, and what we do next matters — the next four years matters,” Gallo said.
Gallo currently represents the board’s district 1, an east Orange area that includes Avalon Park and Union Park.
Although running for a non-partisan seat, Farrant and Gallo are from opposing political parties — Farrant is a Republican, Gallo is a Democrat — and each has won support from other elected leaders who share their affiliation. GOP state representatives Doug Bankson and Susan Plascencia, for example, have endorsed Farrant while Gallo has support from state Rep. Anna Eskamani, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orlando Congressman Maxwell Frost.
Gallo also has earned the endorsement of the district’s teachers union, which says she is fighting for the best teacher raises possible and better health insurance proposals.
Farrant said she doesn’t see herself as a partisan politician. Instead, she’s a mother on a “kingdom assignment” from God to “get our schools back on the right track.”
Both candidates had raised about $60,000 in campaign contributions as of July. Farrant’s fundraising includes a mix of small individual donations and large donations from local religious leaders and real estate executives. Gallo’s fundraising includes a mix of small individual donations and large donations from public education political action committees, local elected officials, and the president of Rosen Hotels & Resorts.
Leadership
Farrant said she’s running for the chair because the school board needs “courageous leadership” willing to make tough decisions to improve the district’s position.
“We’re lacking courageous leadership. Leaders who don’t just blame Tallahassee for the woes that happen in our schools, but who really take ownership and lead courageously. That’s what we’re lacking,” she said.
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Farrant said she’s focused on improving the academic performance of the district, as she claimed the district’s standing has “slowly declined” over the last 30 years.
Though academic performance in Orange schools, as in many districts, dipped following the pandemic, its graduation rate hit a record high in the 2024-25 school year, and this year it again earned an A grade from the state based on its students’ scores on state exams.
“Our number one focus is ensuring that our kids walk away and graduate with a high quality, foundational education that will set them up for success and to be a productive member and patriotic American,” Farrant said.
Gallo said the board’s chair should be “someone who can work across party lines, someone who has relationships in Tallahassee” and “someone who has strong ties to our community,” and thinks that is a role she can best fill.
“We need to be innovative, and we need a leader that understands those challenges, that truly in her heart believes public education supports more than just the students we educate, it supports the community — and that public education is the backbone of our democracy,” Gallo said.
She labels herself a “uniter,” pointing to her work with Republicans in Tallahassee on education legislation such as the 2017 bill guaranteeing recess for elementary school students.
Gallo was a registered Republican until 2023 when she switched to no party affiliation. She registered as a Democrat in 2025, election records show.
The district’s declining enrollment and falling state funding are the biggest issues it faces, she said. OCPS closed seven schools this past year because of low enrollment and cut 200 district-level positions to reduce costs.
For more than 100 years, the district has built schools and expected students to fit into them, Gallo said. But with the expansion of school choice through the state’s voucher program, which pays for private education, the district can “no longer do that,” she said.
“We need to create a space where students choose to be at. We’ve got to shift that mindset and really be student-centered and student-focused on what the students need and what will engage students to bring them back to public schools,” she said.
Tight budgets and teacher pay
The district also needs more state funding, and she said given her track record she is in the best position to lobby lawmakers.
“I know all those people, so when it comes to building coalitions or getting information or working with people, I have those connections to build those coalitions to help move the needle for public education,” Gallo said.
Farrant, however, said the answer to OCPS’ financial woes isn’t in Tallahassee, but rather in finding ways to make the money work here at home. “I would love to have more funding, but I cannot lead by blaming others for any downfall that I have,” she said.
The district can find strategic ways to “cut the fat” in its own operations and stretch the funds the state does allocate, she said.
“We’ve got to pinch every penny,” she said.
Those savings could be passed onto teachers to increase their pay, she said.
Gallo has proposed asking voters in 2028 to approve an additional property tax that would go to teacher pay. Her plan is a .25 mill tax, or an additional 25-cent tax per $1,000 of property value, to go on top of the 1 mill property tax voters have approved, and will be asked to okay again this year, to cover teacher salaries and school programs.
Farrant said she would “absolutely not” go to the voters to ask for more money.
“We closed seven schools, we have a decline of 6,000 students, and we’re going to go out to the voter and ask for more money? They need to see a return on investment, and right now I don’t know that we’ve done a great job of that,” Farrant said.
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