Jenkins creates organization combatting 'conservative takeover' of school boards

Almost exactly a year ago, Brevard school board member Jennifer Jenkins was pushed out of the area she represents when the board voted to redistrict. Though the lone Democrat on Brevard's school board has always said she didn't plan to run again, the move made it so she couldn't change her mind if she wanted to.

But Jenkins showed this week she's not done with politics yet. Though her time in her District 3 seat will come to an end this November, she's already launched a new venture aimed at bringing change to school boards around the country: Educated. We Stand, a political advocacy organization with the goal of "blunting the progress of far-right school takeovers," according to its website.

Numerous things went into inspiring her to create the organization. One of those, she said, was seeing the impact of Moms for Liberty around the country after she, as a first-time candidate, unseated the group's co-founder, Tina Descovich, in 2020.

"When I would go around speaking over the past three years ... I always say, 'I defeated the founder of Moms for Liberty,'" she said. "Everybody claps, and then I always stop them and I just say, 'Well, yeah, I'm really sorry about that ... because I gave her some free time on her hands. So I feel some responsibility to do something about it."

With Educated. We Stand, which Jenkins launched Thursday, she hopes to give some power back to communities that don't feel represented by their school boards, especially in states that experienced a "conservative school board takeover" by Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates in 2022 and 2023.

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"(We'll look at) places and spaces where it's critical that we either retain or regain some balance on those boards in order for them to be representative of the actual communities that they're serving," Jenkins said.

Though she doesn't have specific candidates in mind yet, she said she'll be targeting seats of current board members in Florida who have pledged allegiance to Gov. Ron DeSantis and shown support for his current education agenda. She also wants to focus on boards with a far-right majority.

The project, chaired by Jenkins with a team of eight other people, has been months in the making.

Though she didn't give a specific number as to how many people have donated or how much money the independent expenditure committee is working with, she said they've received a "generous amount of seed money" from donors who care "deeply about our cause and have well-positioned" them to launch the organization.

Jenkins said it became apparent that she needed to find a new way to advocate for public education when the redistricting took place in May of last year. At first, she considered running for the U.S. Senate, but ultimately opted not to amidst the passing of her mother and after Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former U.S. representative, launched her campaign for Senate.

"It would have been a really significant uphill battle to gain some statewide recognition," Jenkins said.

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Though she opted not to run for Senate, the conversations she had as she considered it are a huge part of what led her to launching Educated. We Stand, she said. Jenkins described how she felt heard and validated in both her experiences as a school board member who has been harassed for her support of LGBTQ students and mask mandates during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in what she's seen the county undergo as new members of the board were elected and made it a supermajority conservative.

But it was a "double-edged sword," she said.

"I started to realize no one is saving us, there isn't really a plan in place and that scares me," she said. "That's when I decided I need to step up, and I need to be a part of the solution. I can't just walk away and hope that some other organization or some other person nationally is going to take this on."

She said it's her hope that she can be part of the solution.

"I think that there needs to be an umbrella overall that's willing to kind of support candidates across the nation, across the state of Florida (and) support legislators that are already in office who are struggling with messaging," Jenkins said.

The PAC didn't immediately show up in the Florida Department of State's Campaign Finance Database as of Friday morning.

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at [email protected]. X: @_finchwalker.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Jenkins launches organization to push against far-right school board takeovers