Nothing Suspicious Here

A new statewide-sounding “teachers” group appears weeks before the election, armed with school-board endorsements and deep charter-school ties.

With Gov. DeSantis apparently out of the school-board endorsement business, a brand-new organization with deep charter-school ties has arrived just in time to tell Florida voters which “teacher-approved” candidates to support.

Its name is United Teachers of Florida.

Its motto?

“Standing Up for Florida’s Teachers.”

It certainly sounds like a teachers union.

It isn’t.

Its website describes UTF as a “non-union professional organization” and says it was “created by teachers, for teachers.” Yet its original incorporation papers defined its membership as its own board of directors—not a statewide membership of classroom teachers.

And those directors have some interesting résumés.

UTF chair Maria Alba-Quesada is a charter-school administrator and a DeSantis appointee to a state education council. Dianet De Armas is a charter-school principal. Original director Ira Paul serves on a charter-school governing board. The attorney who incorporated UTF, Jeffrey Wood of Tripp Scott, is longtime general counsel to the Florida Charter School Alliance and is himself a DeSantis appointee.

Then there is Ralph Arza, the longtime Florida charter-school lobbyist and governmental-affairs consultant. At least two of UTF’s three original directors (Alba-Quesada, Ira Paul and Jeffrey Wood) have documented professional links to Ralph Arza’s charter-school consulting network. Arza is also tied to the Florida Charter School Alliance, whose leadership and membership include major players in Florida’s corporate charter-school industry.

So the organization called United Teachers of Florida, “Standing Up for Florida’s Teachers,” was created by people whose professional networks run straight through Florida’s charter-school lobbying and consulting world.

Nothing suspicious here.

Standing up for Florida’s teachers, indeed.

The timing is even better.

UTF was incorporated on September 17, just weeks before the general election. Its original articles contained the standard language for a 501(c)(3)-type organization, explicitly saying it would not participate in political campaigns.

By September 27, its new website was already announcing school-board endorsements.

On September 28, the board voted to delete that prohibition and replace it with language expressly allowing the organization to endorse, support or oppose candidates.

Problem solved.

UTF now endorses 18 candidates for public school boards around Florida. Several come from the same political ecosystem that helped reshape Florida school boards during the DeSantis/Moms for Liberty era. Gene Trent and Tammy Dennis in Brevard, for example, are Moms for Liberty-backed candidates. Cindy Spray was a DeSantis-backed candidate in 2022. Kate Wallace is serving on the Polk School Board because DeSantis appointed her to the seat in 2025.

This is not to say every UTF candidate fits that mold. They don’t. In some races UTF has even endorsed candidates supported by the established teachers union.

But that makes the basic question more—not less—interesting:

Who exactly are the “United Teachers of Florida”? Who selected these 18 candidates? What criteria were used to decide which school-board candidates deserved the endorsement of an organization claiming to be “Standing Up for Florida’s Teachers”? And why did this statewide-sounding organization spring into existence just six weeks before an election?

The actual statewide teachers organization is the Florida Education Association, with local affiliates representing educators across Florida.

United Teachers of Florida is something else.

And, apparently, it arrived right on schedule.

Nothing suspicious here.