First-time candidate, business development manager and dad Kyle Goudy, 33, of Dr. Phillips, is running for the District 4 seat on the Orange County School Board. He squares off against long-time educator Anne Douglas and former teacher Jacob “Jake” Petroski in the nonpartisan election on Aug. 20.

Early voting takes place Aug. 5-18, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Check here for locations. Mail-in ballots can be requested through Aug. 8 and must be returned to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office by 7 p.m. on Aug. 20. The winner will represent the district. If no one wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will be held Election Day, Nov. 5.

Goudy told VoxPopuli in a June interview that he decided to run for school board because he saw the impact that his parents who were educators had on students, plus his daughter is about to enter Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) and her preparations “motivated me to start going to the board meetings.”

But a May 30 Facebook reel posted to his campaign site — recorded at Family Church Lakeside during a live recording of a Family Church Podcast interview with Christian nationalist author Eric Metaxas — Goudy tells the author of Letter to the American Church (Salem Books, 2022) that he’s running “largely because of your book.”

Metaxas, whose X feed (formerly Twitter) and eponymous radio show is filled with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and a favorite among far-right evangelicals, election deniers and Jan. 6 insurrectionists, is “best known for promoting a false Christian nation origin story for the United States,” according to Baptist News Global.

Goudy responded to VoxPopuli, saying that the message he took from the book was to get involved, and he does not “stand for hate toward the LGTBQ+ community under any circumstances. If Eric Metaxas does, then we are on completely different wavelengths there."

Not a politician

Even as he campaigns, Goudy, who’s primarily worked in real estate and in amateur athletics, said he doesn’t view himself as a “politician” per se. “I think a lot of times, people ask, What party are you? Are you a politician? It’s obviously politics because we’re going to be elected. But I tell people I’m the Do What’s Right For Kids Party. Partisan politics, in my opinion, are almost a distraction from trying to do the right thing for education.”

In November, voters will have the opportunity to vote on Amendment 1, which would have school board candidates running for office under their parties flags for the first time in nearly two decades.

Goudy believes the races should stay nonpartisan. “Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, an NPA [no party affiliation], I think we should all be unified in doing what’s right for kids,” he said. “A lot of these core issues have nothing to do with traditional partisan politics – 47 percent of third graders aren’t reading on grade level. We need to figure that out.”

Currently at GolfNow, an online service for reserving tee times at premiere golf resorts, Goudy was previously head of sponsorships for the nonprofit Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which develops and promotes amateur sports and physical fitness programs. There, according to his campaign website, he “helped structure a partnership” that enabled students to learn about the academic and financial requirements for colleges and universities and connected student-athletes with coaches at these schools. He also headed up the Presidential Youth Fitness Award program.

Goudy told VoxPopuli his campaign is focused on literacy, school buses, fiscal responsibility and school safety.

Teacher pay and retention

“We need to do everything we can to support teachers,” Goudy said. “If the state wants to invest money into teachers, I think we need to support decisions like that.” He said it “breaks his heart” that teachers might not be able to afford to live in the school district they work in.

Florida now ranks fiftieth in the nation for teacher pay. New data from the National Education Association shows the national average pay for teachers, pre-K through college is $69,544 while Florida teachers earn just $53,098.

Low pay isn’t the only issue tanking teacher morale. — GOP political interference into classroom instruction — from removing books that have been on school reading lists for decades to new history standards that assert that enslavement held benefits for the enslaved to censoring classroom conversation about gender and identity — have also taken their toll.

“We need to let teachers teach,” Goudy said. “I think history should be taught as best we know it happened, without agenda or shaming. History is doomed to repeat itself if we don’t learn from lessons of the past.” Goudy has said he is “proud to be American,” but he doesn’t believe in overlooking “shameful” elements of our nation’s history. “No slave wanted to be enslaved,” Goudy said. He does not support hiding or erasing elements of Black history in the classroom.

“You could make the case that the state is over-engaged. Ninety-nine percent of teachers are in it for the right reasons and doing the best that they can. I think we need to trust that our teachers are in there to do the right thing for the right reasons and let them teach and not get in their way.”

Book-banning and literacy

Goudy is focused on what he sees as Orange County’s literacy problem. Only a third of OCPS third- through tenth graders achieved a Level 3 or better on their OCPS English benchmark exams. U.S. News & World Report reported that reading proficiency for OCPS elementary, middle and high school students ranges from about 43 to 49 percent. Meanwhile, legislative efforts have revolved around restricting books, many award-winners, with racial, gender and LGBTQ+ themes.

“Our focus when it comes to books should be on getting kids to read,” Goudy said, adding that when media specialists and teachers have to focus on cataloging books and managing their libraries, they don’t have as much time to focus on literacy and helping students.

He explained to VoxPopuli that he believes the book banning conversation is more “nuanced” than people often make it out to be with two camps: book burners” and “people who want porn in schools.” There’s a middle ground, he said, where educators use their training to select age-appropriate books for students. Still, he opposes GOP-backed laws that criminally penalize media specialists with jail time for having books deemed pornographic in their collections.

“I also don’t think we need to be scaring teachers into thinking they’re going to lose their jobs because of a book they have in the library.”

One organization that is into scaring teachers and media specialists is Moms for Liberty, designated an “extremist group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its pro-book banning stance and opposition to racially inclusive and LGBTQ+ curriculum. As the only Republican running against two Democrats in the nonpartisan race, Goudy said he’s often asked about the group, especially since one of Moms for Liberty’s foot soldiers, Alicia Farrant, won the District 3 seat on the school board in 2022 after campaigning on a platform of removing books she described as “filth” from schools and ending mask mandates amid the pandemic.

“Forgive my ignorance on the subject, I don’t really know much about it,” Goudy said of the group. “I don’t really know what their agenda is.”

The group made news late last year when co-founder Bridget Ziegler and her husband, deposed Chair of the Florida Republican Party Christian Ziegler, were caught in a threeway sex scandal and Christian Ziegler accused of rape but not ultimately charged. Bridget Ziegler remains on the Sarasota County School Board.

Transportation

After touring schools across the district in the afternoons, Goudy said he would see students sitting outside waiting for buses after school let out because there aren’t enough drivers to get the kids home.

“If you think about Orlando, we’re competing against Disney, Universal, and a lot of other big employers that have great compensation packages for drivers.”

He said OCPS’s goal should be to make commercial driver’s license programs more accessible, and, once the district has reliable drivers, to retain them and create adequate compensation packages.

Half-penny sales tax

Goudy is a booster for the half-penny sales tax, on the ballot in November, which is designed to directly benefit public schools. “It’s so important that people understand … how important that tax is to the schools, and all the things that it did when it passed in 2002,” said Goudy. “It [half-penny sales tax] allowed us to upgrade old schools. It allows us to build new schools. And, as everybody knows, with our population growth, we need the continued investment in public schools.”

OCPS already has a list of projects and repairs that could cost up to $2.7 billion by 2033, including building new schools and renovating others.

Student safety

“I’m all for increasing safety; I think that’s the number one thing you have to have before you can have anything else in schools,” Goudy said. “But I think these plans need to be really well thought out.”

Depending on the budget for hardening schools, Goudy said he would consider implementing security screening processes in schools similar to those at the entrance of Disney Springs. The Evolv technology that Disney uses specifically identifies weapons, rather than general metals, and can scan guests – or students – 10 times faster than a metal detector.

“Metal detectors are slow and cumbersome, and I know firsthand from students how often kids were showing up late to first period because of how long they take. I think we need to figure out how to expedite processes like that,” he said.

Goudy did not address plans to secure schools’ back areas near athletic fields, which are typically less fortified.

Student health

Goudy wants the school board to crack down on “rampant” vaping on school campuses, citing its addictive nature. Goudy, who gets his intel from the high school volunteers on his campaign, said vaping is a “huge problem in bathrooms.”

“We have 14-to-18 year olds that are going into the bathroom and vaping.That shouldn't be happening in public schools during school hours. A 17-year-old's not legally allowed to smoke a tobacco vape anywhere. So why are we allowing it in a school bathroom?

He wants the school board to institute preventive measures.

“A 16-year-old that's vaping in school is breaking the law.  And if you're enabling breaking of the law, I think the county needs to get involved,” he said. “I know they have the ability to do it, and I think they should. If you can prevent that, I think you should do everything you can to do so.”