Renaissance or Reimagining? Florida’s Public Schools on the Ballot
Jolly would rebuild the comprehensive public-school system. Donalds would expand a customizable marketplace of education providers.
Florida will choose a new governor on November 3rd. The contrasts between the two leading candidates’ K-12 education policies could not be starker.
David Jolly’s K-12 theory:
Strengthen the public system, pay educators more, require comparable obligations from publicly funded private providers, and then allow families to choose among genuinely strong options.
Byron Donalds’s K-12 theory:
Shift power and purchasing authority toward individual families, make funding portable, customize each student’s educational pathway, and expand the number and type of providers competing to serve them.
These candidates are not just disagreeing about school choice or accountability systems. They are disagreeing over what constitutes the public education system.
Jolly essentially defines public education institutionally: publicly governed schools open to everyone and carrying universal obligations.
Donalds increasingly defines it financially: education is publicly funded even when it is delivered by private schools, employers, charter operators, online providers or other entities chosen by parents. His campaign says directly, “Let education money follow the student so parents can choose the best school for their child.”
I have attached a chart below contrasting the two candidates’ K-12 platforms.
I want to focus on a few especially important differences.
Accountability for private choice options
First, accountability for private choice options.
Jolly has made the principle of comparable obligations for public dollars a centerpiece of his education platform. His campaign says private schools participating in the voucher program should meet the same high standards as public schools, provide the same specialized services and not charge voucher students additional tuition. He would also restore means testing to the voucher program.
Byron Donalds has not proposed requiring voucher schools to assume comparable academic, financial, admissions and service obligations.
His wife, Erika Donalds, a prominent education-policy advocate who has helped articulate the couple’s broader education vision, has been more explicit. When a 2019 Florida proposal would have required public, charter and private schools to operate under more comparable requirements, she objected that public-school advocates were trying to impose the same “burdensome regulations” on alternative schools rather than freeing public schools from those regulations.
That distinction matters because many of the requirements imposed on public schools are the mechanisms taxpayers traditionally use to assure quality and accountability. Florida’s public schools operate under requirements governing teacher certification, academic standards, statewide assessment, school grades, financial reporting and transparency. Private schools operate under a substantially different regulatory framework. Florida law explicitly states that the state does not intend to “regulate, control, approve, or accredit” private schools, and the Florida Department of Education notes that private-school owners are responsible for decisions about teacher qualifications, curriculum, assessment, grades and graduation requirements.
Erika Donalds’ preferred approach emphasizes parent-directed funding, transparency, choice and market-based accountability rather than applying the district-school regulatory structure uniformly across providers.
Public-school adequacy
Second, public-school adequacy.
Jolly argues that Florida’s public schools have been inadequately funded and has committed himself to substantially increasing investment and teacher pay. His campaign proposes a 10-year “public education renaissance” and would expand the allowable uses of Tourist Development Tax revenue to help pay teachers and improve school infrastructure.
Donalds has detailed several programmatic investments but has not argued that Florida public schools need a broad increase in funding.
Rather, his education agenda treats the central issue as how education dollars are spent and who controls them. His proposals emphasize literacy, individualized pathways, apprenticeships and parent-directed funding, with education dollars following students across different providers.
Erika Donalds has been even more explicit in arguing for an education marketplace in which parents have greater purchasing power and public funding follows students wherever they go. At a March education forum, Byron described an “economy of education” in which parents could find the academic environment that best suited their child.
The future structure of grades 6-12
Third, the future structure of grades 6-12.
While Jolly is calling for a Public School Renaissance, Donalds may be proposing something more transformational than expanded vouchers or CTE, but not because most of the opportunities he lists are new.
Florida’s traditional public schools already offer many of them: AP, IB and AICE courses, dual enrollment, career academies, industry certifications, internships, apprenticeships, work-based learning and individualized academic-and-career planning beginning in middle school.
In fact, Florida law already requires middle-grade career and education planning that results in a personalized academic and career plan. That plan must inform students about Bright Futures, state university admission, AP, IB, AICE, dual enrollment, career dual enrollment, internships, apprenticeships and industry certifications. Florida law also requires high schools to advise students about college-credit and acceleration opportunities.
What appears more distinctive about Donalds’s vision is the customizable marketplace surrounding those opportunities.
His Student Success Plan would begin no later than sixth grade, incorporate stackable credits and employer-designed career tracks, and allow education dollars to “follow the student wherever their path leads.” Students could combine college, university, workforce, trade, military, entrepreneurship and hybrid pathways.
At the Donaldses’ March education forum, the couple discussed making grades 6-12 increasingly modular and customizable. Byron described parents as customers with purchasing power, while Erika spoke of unleashing capitalism and free-market competition in education.
Taken far enough, that model could change the role of the traditional comprehensive high school.
Rather than serving as the community institution where students encounter a broad range of academics, arts, career education, athletics, extracurricular activities and relationships under one roof, the high school could become one provider among several in an individualized educational portfolio: part public school, part college, part employer, part private provider.
The innovation, therefore, may be less about creating new opportunities than about unbundling where those opportunities are delivered and who receives the public dollars attached to them.
That raises an important question about whether personalization expands opportunity or begins narrowing it too early.
Donalds says college, workforce, military, entrepreneurship and hybrid pathways would be equally supported and that students who change course would not lose time or money.
But a personalized pathway beginning just after elementary school could become very different from simply exposing children to possibilities.
We have learned the limitations of a “college for all” mentality. Not every successful student needs or wants a four-year university degree, and strong career and technical education can open valuable opportunities.
But the corrective should not become “college is not for people like you.”
Children entering sixth grade are still discovering their interests, abilities and ambitions. Their educational pathway should expand those possibilities rather than prematurely determine them.
The critical distinction is college AND career versus college OR career.
A student should be able to study welding, nursing, cybersecurity, construction or advanced manufacturing while still taking the mathematics, science, literature, history, foreign language and other academic coursework that preserves the option of attending college later.
Career preparation can add opportunities without closing academic doors.
The test for Donalds’s proposal, then, is not whether it offers more pathways. Florida schools already offer many of them.
The more consequential question is whether a marketplace of increasingly separate, customized pathways will preserve the broad educational opportunities and community role of the comprehensive public high school, and whether every student, regardless of the pathway chosen at 11, 12 or 13, will still have a genuine opportunity to change direction later.
The money behind the competing visions
For public-education advocates who prioritize the comprehensive public-school model, the contrast between these education visions is stark. Major school-choice donors appear to recognize the policy differences as well, and some of the nation’s most prominent school-choice funders have invested heavily in Donalds’s campaign.
Jeff Yass, one of the country’s largest financial supporters of school choice, has provided $7.5 million directly to Friends of Byron Donalds. He also contributed $3.5 million to Club for Growth Action Florida, which subsequently gave $3.75 million to Friends of Byron Donalds. WUSF calculated Yass-linked support for Donalds at approximately $11 million.
The education connection is explicit. When reporters asked a representative for Yass about his contributions to Donalds, the response was simple: “Donalds is a school choice warrior.”
Ken Griffin has contributed another $10 million to Friends of Byron Donalds, the largest single contribution reported to the committee as of early September. Griffin’s Citadel has also participated in advocacy surrounding Florida’s expansion of the Schools of Hope law allowing certain charter schools to co-locate in traditional public-school facilities.
Donalds rejects the suggestion that donors are determining his policies. He told the Florida Trib that donors do not set his agenda and noted that his commitment to school choice predates this campaign.
I believe he is correct on that point. Donalds and his wife have advocated school choice for years. The more revealing point is not that these donors are buying his education agenda, but that they are funding him because they fully support it.
That makes the alignment between policy and money especially clear. Major school-choice donors are not trying to persuade Donalds to embrace a parent-directed education marketplace. He is already there. They are investing in a candidate whose long-standing education philosophy closely matches their own. And it is NOT in support of traditional public schools.
The Donalds’ have described a broader vision in which education dollars are increasingly untethered from institutions, parents become purchasers in an education marketplace, private enterprise plays a larger role, and grades 6-12 become increasingly modular and customizable.
David Jolly is campaigning from a very different premise. He is calling for a Public School Renaissance built around substantially greater investment in neighborhood public schools, higher teacher compensation, and stronger obligations for private schools accepting public funds. He would also return Florida’s voucher program to income targeting rather than continuing universal eligibility.
So what is this election really about?
The education debate in this governor’s race is not simply about whether parents should have choices. Florida families already have many, many choices, both within and outside the public-school system.
Nor is it simply about whether students should have career options. Our public schools already provide college courses, career academies, industry credentials, internships and apprenticeships alongside traditional academics.
The larger disagreement is about what happens next.
Does Florida rebuild and reinvest in comprehensive public schools that serve as community institutions and provide a broad range of opportunities to every child who walks through the door?
Or does Florida continue moving toward an education marketplace in which public dollars follow individual students through an expanding network of public, charter, private, employer and other providers?
There are legitimate policy questions within both approaches, and the details matter. But they lead toward distinctly different structures for Florida’s education system.
For decades, the debate over school choice was presented largely as a question of whether families should be allowed to leave the public-school system.
The 2026 governor’s race raises a much larger question:
What kind of public education system will be left behind, and what do Floridians want the words “public education” to mean?
I am attaching a comparable Jolly vs Donalds K-12 policy chart, as of October 6th. I have tried to exclude my biases – and I definitely recognize I have biases – in this chart. I encourage you to “do your own research.” I used AI to format this chart and add the appropriate links.
