Two educators face off in the November race for the last seat on the Orange County School Board, a contest involving a controversial teacher who was also ousted from her position as head of the local teachers union.
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Both Diana Moore, an Orange County Public Schools elementary teacher and the former union president, and Susanne Peña, a former OCPS teacher and current president of the Florida Association for Bilingual Education, earned enough votes in the three-candidate August primary to advance to the runoff on Nov. 3 for the board’s District 3 seat. Peña was the leading vote-getter with about 47% of votes but needed more than 50% to win in that election.
The winner in the upcoming election will replace the incumbent Alicia Farrant, who ran for school board chair in August and lost to Angie Gallo. Farrant will lose her place on the board when her current term ends next month. The race for the board’s District 1 seat was also settled on Aug. 18, leaving only the District 3 seat still up for grabs.
District 3 takes in the areas from south of downtown Orlando to the Osceola County line.
The new board member will join a school board facing financial woes. In the last few years, OCPS has struggled with declining enrollment, lackluster state funding, rising healthcare costs and the surge of voucher use for private and home schooling.
OCPS has lost about 12,000 students in the last two years, causing the district to cut hundreds of jobs, close seven schools and slash budgets in order to keep up. It could face more school closures in the coming years.
The next District 3 school board member also will join the board as it works to replace the retiring Superintendent Maria Vazquez.
Moore declined an interview, citing her schedule as a classroom teacher. She instead referred to her emailed statements sent in response to previous questions about the contents of her personnel file.
Her personnel file from her three decades in OCPS is nearly 1,500 pages and outlines a pattern of complaints against her about hostile and demeaning behavior toward colleagues and parents.
Last year, for example, Moore’s principal described her as “combative and aggressive,” said her behavior was “interfering with the operation of the school” and noted she had driven at least three of her colleagues to tears, documents show.
Moore was also forcibly removed from her job as teachers union president in 2015 when the national union determined she “defied the rules” and temporarily took over Orange’s union.
Moore said in her email that the most recent complaints from colleagues were in retaliation for her filing a complaint against a teacher. She insisted she is a good teacher, with support from parents and good evaluations.
“My reputation as a good teacher is being tainted because I speak up,” she wrote.
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Ahead of the primary, she told the Sentinel her key campaign issues were parent partnership and financial accountability. She also said OCPS needed to look at its role in declining enrollment, not blame vouchers and lower birthrates.
“The public needs to have transparency and integrity brought back to this office,” she said in August.
Peña, in an interview, said the district needs to try to prevent further school closures. She’s seen the “ripple effects” of school closures first-hand, as her son’s elementary school saw an influx of students from a campus OCPS closed in May.
She has spoken with parents and teachers who had to switch school and said closures can be “detrimental for an entire community.”
“You can feel the pain of a school closure. This is something that is very personal,” she said.
Peña said she wants to Vazquez’s replacement to be someone who has experience at several levels of the system, from the classroom to the district offices, which will help them navigate the issues facing OCPS.
“Whoever is in that role is going to have to understand that they’re coming into a district that has a lot of challenges,” she said.
Peña is looking for a superintendent who understands Orange County’s diversity in both culture and economic background. She said a superintendent should be “willing to listen” to a variety of viewpoints to make informed decisions on how to tackle the district’s problems.
Peña has been endorsed by Gallo, who is already on the board and will become chair in November, board members Stephanie Vanos, Anne Douglas and Maria Salamanca, and the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, the local teachers union.
She’s also garnered endorsements from prominent local Democrats such as Congressman Maxwell Frost, state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, and State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.
Moore said she did not seek endorsements because school board races are non-partisan.
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