An Orange County school board member and member of the right-wing “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty is running this year for school board chair, aiming to replace outgoing chair Teresa Jacobs.
It’s a position that would give Alicia Farrant, a Republican who first drew headlines for her book-banning activism, the power to set the agenda for board meetings and break votes on issues that are split by a tie.
Farrant, representing District 3 in Florida’s fourth-largest school district, was elected to the Orange County school board in 2022, at the height of Moms for Liberty’s influence in state and eventually national politics.
Before joining the board, the mom of five had already become known to school board members for her objections to books she decried as “pornographic” in school libraries and for protesting the district’s mandatory masking policy during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
She’s also a proud ally of outgoing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has similarly championed state efforts to scrutinize school libraries, roll back societal acceptance of queer identities and purge books with LGBTQ+ themes.
“This book-ban hoax is nothing more than political propaganda designed to bring confusion and division,” Farrant claimed at a 2024 press conference alongside DeSantis and then-education commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. “When we look at the big picture, this isn’t so much about books,” Farrant argued. “This battle is between good and evil that is targeting our children.”
Farrant is running for school board chair this year against fellow school board member Angie Gallo. Gallo, a longtime public education advocate, has already been endorsed for the chair role by most of her sitting colleagues, including school board members Maria Salamanca (the current vice-chair), Vicki Elaine Felder, Anne Douglas and Stephanie Vanos.
A mother of two who was previously active with the Florida PTA, Gallo is a former Republican who left the GOP in 2023 and registered as a Democrat in 2025, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The school board — and the chair position — is officially nonpartisan, although school boards became increasingly politicized during the COVID-19 pandemic as groups like Moms for Liberty rose up to protest diversity representation in school books (often, gay representation) and mandatory mask requirements in schools.
Gallo, however, doesn’t use partisan terms (or invoke Bible verses) to describe her motivation for wanting to lead the board as chair. “It’s really a choice of strong leadership versus ideology and chaos,” Gallo told Orlando Weekly in a phone interview.
Gallo was first elected to Orange County school board in 2018. She says she was driven to run for school board chair to help lead the district through the challenges of declining enrollment and teacher pay and supporting stronger student outcomes.
Both she and her daughters, now grown, are products of the public education system. One of them today works as a fifth-grade teacher in Orange County Public Schools.
“I believe that my leadership skills, my proven leadership, really sets me up to be able to lead us through those challenges,” Gallo told the Weekly. “And I couldn’t leave it up to chance. I couldn’t leave it up to have someone that is more interested in culture wars or pushing their ideologies in this position, because we need someone who’s focused on student outcomes, teacher and staff well-being, and pay, and someone who really can be innovative in our approach to bring back the students that have left Orange County Public Schools.”
The Orange County school district, the eighth-largest in the nation, lost thousands of students over the last school year, reducing the amount of state funding the district received per pupil.
The district, and Gallo, attribute the significant decline in student enrollment to declining birth rates (an issue extending far beyond Orange County), aggressive immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, and the expansion of the state’s taxpayer-funded school voucher program that has incentivized sending kids to less-regulated private schools or taking up homeschooling, at the expense of a more fully funded public education system.
“It’s really a choice of strong leadership versus ideology and chaos.”
Angie Gallo, an Orange County school board member running for school board chair
“I support a parent’s right to choose, and I support choice,” Gallo affirmed. But she takes issue with the lack of accountability for private schools, compared to the public education system. And she’d like to find ways to better meet students where they’re at — for instance, building more microschools that are tailored to provide specialized, more personalized educational programming — to better engage them.
“I have lots of ideas of ways to bring back students, to engage students, to bring them back to school while still keeping the academic standards high, our student outcomes high, and meeting them where they are by providing that flexibility that we know that they want in public schools,” she said.
Farrant herself did not respond to a request for an interview from Orlando Weekly. In a questionnaire published by the Orange Observer, however, Farrant described herself as a “passionate mama bear” who “has consistently advocated for policies that strengthen our schools and protect students.”
She told the Sentinel, “When I win this, the entire county — and I pray the state and the nation — will see that God always gets the victory.”
On her campaign website, Farrant lists priorities that include tackling the country’s “literacy crisis” (how many kids do you know who are choosing print books over TikTok or an iPad?), restoring trust in public education, and championing a “classical, common-sense education.”
Since her election to the school board four years ago, Farrant has also faced backlash from LGBTQ+ rights advocates — and her fellow board members — for speaking against the designation of LGBTQ+ Pride Month by the district and for claiming that the district prioritizes LGBTQ+ students over heterosexual students.
“She’s said some remarks from the dais that have been hurtful to our students and have made them feel unsafe within our schools,” Gallo said, adding that Farrant has made a concerted effort to inappropriately “push her Christian ideas and ideologies onto the school board.”
Farrant has received endorsements from the Orange County GOP, several Republican state lawmakers, and Stand Up for Medical Freedom — an anti-vaccine group aligned with the Trump-endorsed “Make America Healthy Again” movement — and the Conservative Ministers of Orlando, a Facebook group that appears solely dedicated to endorsing fellow conservatives for elected office.
Gallo has been endorsed by the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida, the Orange County teachers’ union, the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, several business groups, and more than a dozen Democratic state and local elected officials, including Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, and U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost.
“We’re in support of Angie Gallo for school board chair because she stands with teachers,” Clinton McCracken, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, told Orlando Weekly in an emailed statement.
The Orange County Classroom Teachers Association is a labor union that represents more than 13,000 teachers, school psychologists and instructional staff in the school district. The union, and its parent organization — the statewide Florida Education Association — have been targeted for elimination by DeSantis through recent union reform laws, as well as by anti-union groups allied with Moms for Liberty, such as the right-wing Freedom Foundation.
“[Farrant] has spent her time on the board fanning the flames of culture wars, promoting book bans, has tried to remove LGBTQ+ recognition months and is openly transphobic,” said McCracken, a middle school art teacher who is open about being gay himself. “The people of Orange County have always supported educators and our amazing students, and the way to do that is to vote for Angie Gallo.”
Unlike Farrant, McCracken pointed out, Gallo has supported dedicating a portion of the school district’s one-mill referendum — a property tax — to increasing teacher pay. She supported a change to the referendum language to accomplish this earlier this year, to no avail. The one-mill tax, representing $1 of every $1,000 of the taxable property value, will be on the ballot of Orange County voters for renewal this fall.
Orange County voters have renewed the one mill every four years since 2010 to help fund teacher and coach positions, field trips, charter schools and other school programs.
Gallo told the Weekly she supports the idea of allowing voters a say on whether to approve an additional 0.25 mill referendum in 2028, where 100 percent of the revenue generated from that extra tax would go toward increasing educator pay.
The tax on homeowners from that additional 25 cents per $1,000 of property value, Gallo argued, “would be minimal.” She believes voters should have the opportunity to decide for themselves. “I want the voters to decide if they would once again support teachers in the form of dollars that would go directly into the pockets of our teachers and our classified staff.”
The upcoming school board chair race will be decided in the August primary election, which takes place Aug. 18, 2026. Early voting begins Monday, Aug. 3, and runs through Sunday, Aug. 16.
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